Ghana: ECG Lost US$344.3 Million Revenue In 2018 Due To System Losses

Ghana’s southern electricity distribution company, ECG, recorded a huge loss of US$ 344.3 million in revenue as a result of system losses in 2018.

The company purchased a total power of 10,900.55 GWh from power producing companies in the West African nation.

However, ECG sold 8,251.47 GWh to customers with the remaining 2,649.08, which represented 24.30 percent of power purchased, being lost through system losses despite creating Revenue Protection Division and installation of Automatic Meter Reading for special load tariff customers put in place by management.

In monetary value, the 2,649.08 GWh is about $344,380,400million.

This was contained in the 2020 Auditor-General’s Report.

The report attributed the huge revenue loss to high transmission losses and electricity theft.

“ECG, in effect, lost 24.3% of its revenue for the year and this could affect the profitability and viability of the Company,” the report said.

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The Auditor-General advised Management of ECG to determine losses which are due to technical and commercial challenges so as to deploy measures to reduce those losses.

Responding to the issues raised by the Auditor-General, management of ECG said that currently, the estimation of technical losses is undertaken only in selected districts. For estimation of technical losses globally across all ECG districts at the same time needs a dedicated and well-trained team of personnel, a set of measuring tools including PQ analyser and voltage recorded, power flow software that can handle the modelling of both balanced and unbalanced loads, boundary meters, AMR meter and GIS software.