Ghana's Power Sector Utility Companies Must Be More Creative

Instead of piling on yet more agony for electricity users in Ghana,  by  constantly  reviewing their tariffs upwards, the power-sector utilities must be more creative in running their businesses. One of the excuses often  used to justify higher  tariffs, is that it will enable the power sector utilities modernise their plant and equipment.

The question Ghana's overtaxed and overburdened population would like the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCO),  the Volta River Authority (VRA), the Bui Power Authority (BPA) and the Electricity Corporation of Ghana Limited (ECG) to ponder is: to obtain more funds why don't they ask the government of Ghana to offload 40 percent of its shares in all the state-owned utility companies in the power sector on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), and use the interest-free capital thus  raised,  to modernise their plant and equipment?

 Secondly, why don't they use cutting-edge ideas to make their businesses more efficient entities? For example, would the VRA and the BPA not produce power more cheaply, if they built mega-windfarms off Ghana's shores in partnership with global  class-leading  Chinese giant-windpower-plant manufacturing companies,  and used the U.S. company Hydrogenics' power-to-gas technology to supply gas to their thermal plants? They can inspect an example in Germany: the commercial power-to-gas plant in Falkenhagen operated by E.On and Swissgas (commissioned on 28/8/2013).

 Let them ask the genuises who rule us to invite Hydrogenics' top brass  to Ghana to discuss such a project with them. Perhaps they could persuade the American government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to pay for one in the next compact with Ghana, which addresses the country's inadequate power generating capacity.

And would the ECG too not make money, as well as  save power generated by the VRA and BPA, whiles helping to cut down electricity bills for their customers, if it partnered Deng Limited  and adopted  the innovative U.S. solar energy company SolarCity's business model: installing solar power systems - which the partnership would own, not the customers on whose roofs they will be installed - and charged customers  a fixed monthly sum for the solar power produced?

Ghana's power-sector utility companies must lower their production  costs by becoming more efficient. That can be achieved through  innovativation - not endlless tariff increases in a nation with an overtaxed population such as ours. Enough is enough.  A word to the wise...