Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo has commended the Management of the Volta River Authority (VRA) and their engineers for successfully relocating and re-installing the six units of the Ameri Power Plant with a total generation capacity of 150MW at Anwomaso near Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.
The Ameri Power Plant, which is on wheels, was located at Aboadze in the Western Region, but GRIDCo recommended that it should be relocated to the middle belt of the West African nation to ensure the stability of the grid since most of the power plants were located in southern Ghana, thus, posing transmission challenges.
Genser Energy, a wholly Ghanaian-owned company, was engaged to construct gas pipeline infrastructure from the Western Region to Anwomaso for the power plant to utilise the domestic natural gas process from the Western Region.
The Volta River Authority started ground preparation and installation of the components of the plant and completed the exercise few weeks ago.
On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, President Akufo-Addo inaugurated the plant amidst jubilation by residents of Kumasi and surrounding towns.
President Nana Akufo-Addo commended engineers of VRA who worked tirelessly to install the plant.
“They have demonstrated that Ghanaian engineers, from a publicly-owned institution, can rise up to the task of finding engineering solutions to build our nation,” he said.
Congratulating GRIDCO, ECG and GNPC for the respective roles they played in bringing the project to fruition, the President found it even more gratifying to note that “the gas transmission infrastructure for this power station was constructed from Prestea to Anwomaso through a collaboration between the Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC) and Genser Energy Ghana Limited, a dynamic Ghanaian-owned energy company.”
He concluded with an appeal to the investor community to take advantage of the improved electricity supply and put up viable commercial structures that would utilise the resources within the middle and northern belts to ramp up the government’s industrialisation agenda, thereby, accelerating the growth and development of the country.
On his part, the Board Chairman of VRA, Kofi Tutu Agyare, said the Authority is aware that the nation’s industrialisation agenda is directly tied to affordable and reliable electricity supply.
According to him, the Anwomaso Thermal Power Station, which is the first power plant in the region, would spur industrialisation and economic growth in the middle and northern parts of the country.
While acknowledging the hard work of the staff of VRA, Mr Tutu Agyare mentioned that the staff of the Authority worked day and night including weekends, to make sure that the project was completed on time.
“Through our financial recovery and sustainable management practices, we managed to internally raise millions of dollars required to fund the various stages of the project,” he said.
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com