The Ministry of Energy has refuted claims by former Minister of Power, Dr Kwabena Donkor that the country will return to the dark days of long-drawn power outages (dumsor) if urgent steps are not taken to address the country’s generation capacity.

The Energy Ministry, in a statement, said the pervasive dumsor that plagued the country in the past, was never about generational capacity but rather, primarily due to poor hydrology due to over-drafting of hydro dams, inadequate fuel supply to thermal plants and financial challenges.

The statement said in addressing the issue of poor hydrology, there is currently prudent management of hydro resources which includes the hybridisation of Ghana’s hydro dams.

Secondly, it said under this government, gas flow is no longer uni-directional, as there is reverse flow of indigenous natural gas from the West to the East to power turbines.

On the issue of generation capacity, the ministry noted that the government has added 204MW to Amandi, 50MW to Bui Solar and 17MW to VRA Kaleo.

It added that 150MW out of the 400MW Early Power Plant has also been installed bringing the total generation capacity added by this government to 421MW bringing Ghana’s total installed capacity to 5358.50MW against the backdrop of the current peak demand of 3,469MW which was recorded on March 18, 2022.

The ministry, therefore, said it rejects the assertion by the former Power Minister that there is a risk of returning to dumsor by virtue of the state of generational capacity.

In line with the projected demand and the prudent management of the energy sector, the Ministry of Energy expressed confidence that there is no way this country will go back to the dark days of dumsor.

The statement urged Ghanaians to be rest assured that the ministry remains committed to solving every challenge in the generation, transmission and distribution system of the energy sector.