The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) has been accused of withholding critical information about the underlying causes of Ghana’s recurring power outages, with energy analyst Justice Ohene-Akoto demanding greater transparency and detailed explanations of the technical failures affecting the national grid. Mr Ohene-Akoto, Director of the Africa Sustainable Energy Centre, said GRIDCo must move beyond brief accounts of individual incidents and provide comprehensive root-cause analyses showing why major system failures continue to occur and what is being done to prevent their recurrence.
His comments followed the widespread power outage that disrupted electricity supply across major parts of the country on Thursday, August 20, 2026. GRIDCo said the latest interruption was triggered by a major fault on the Akosombo–Volta transmission line, which subsequently caused the automatic shutdown of generating units at the Akosombo power plant and some thermal generating facilities.
But Mr Ohene-Akoto questioned whether the explanation sufficiently accounted for the scale and recurrence of the country’s power system failures. Speaking in an interview on Channel One, he said GRIDCo needed to be more forthcoming with information about the technical circumstances surrounding major outages. “We think GRIDCo is not telling us something. We think GRIDCo should be more transparent on exactly what some of these things are happening.”
Mr Ohene-Akoto said the latest disruption appeared to have exposed concerns about frequency stability within the national electricity system, an issue he believes deserves closer scrutiny. He recalled that he had raised concerns about frequency following an earlier total system collapse, but GRIDCo attributed that incident to lightning. According to him, that explanation did not adequately address his concerns about what may have happened within the system. “I came out saying it’s likely an issue of frequency, I mean, of a frequency that was out of range, that we had a total failure. GRIDCo came out and said it’s a result of lightning, which I have my reservations about. I believe GRIDCo was not telling us something.”
He said recent comments by the Energy Minister John Jinapor pointing to frequency-related challenges had strengthened his view that the issue required a more detailed technical explanation. “Now, on this issue, the Minister came out and said frequency, which I agree with him.” Mr Ohene-Akoto argued that after every major system failure, GRIDCo should publish a detailed technical assessment explaining not only what happened but also why it happened, the weaknesses exposed and the corrective measures being implemented.
He said the absence of such information made it difficult for the public, industry stakeholders and policymakers to determine whether measures being introduced were actually addressing the underlying problems. “If they came out to give us a comprehensive root cause analysis and a comprehensive roadmap, we’d have held them accountable with this one.” He therefore called for detailed troubleshooting reports, lessons learned from previous incidents and a clear roadmap for preventing similar failures.
The analyst also questioned whether investment in new infrastructure, including the proposed construction of an ultra-modern control centre, would by itself resolve the challenges confronting the national grid. He argued that modern equipment would not prevent future failures if weaknesses in existing systems, maintenance practices and operational procedures remained unresolved. Using a previous substation fire as an example, he said the priority should be to identify and eliminate the conditions that allowed such failures to occur rather than simply investing in new facilities.
“An example is the fire, I mean, the substation that caught fire. That should have been something that should never have happened.” He cautioned that building a sophisticated control centre without addressing underlying vulnerabilities could leave the new facility exposed to the same systemic problems. “If the underlying issue were not resolved, we are going to burn the control centre as well.” The latest outage has renewed concerns about the resilience of Ghana’s power transmission system and the ability of the country’s electricity infrastructure to withstand technical faults without triggering widespread disruption.
For Mr Ohene-Akoto, the immediate restoration of power should not mark the end of the conversation. He believes every major outage should trigger a transparent technical investigation, with findings made available to stakeholders and concrete corrective measures subjected to public scrutiny. He said such an approach would help establish accountability and reassure consumers and businesses that recurring disruptions are being addressed at their source rather than being treated as isolated incidents.
By: Joyce Owusu
