The Minister for Energy and Green Transition, John Abdulai Jinapor, has urged electricity consumers to remain patient following a power interruption that affected parts of Accra and other areas of the country on Thursday morning.

The outage, according to the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo), resulted from a fault on the Akosombo-Volta transmission line.

Dr Jinapor explained that the disruption was connected to a temporary control system installed after an earlier incident damaged critical transmission infrastructure at the Akosombo power facility.

Speaking at the commissioning of a new office complex for the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), the Minister said government had to choose between shutting down the Akosombo plant for several months to undertake a complete reconstruction or putting in place an interim system that would allow electricity generation to continue.

Government opted for the latter to avoid a prolonged shutdown of the power plant.

Dr Jinapor said engineers have since been managing the temporary arrangement, which has enabled the facility to continue supporting the national grid over the past several months.

He, however, noted that the interim system remains susceptible to disturbances in power frequency, which could automatically trigger the shutdown of the Akosombo facility as a safety measure.

The Minister disclosed that construction of a permanent control centre and associated infrastructure is progressing and is expected to be completed next month.

He acknowledged the inconvenience caused by Thursday’s interruption, saying some parts of Accra and other parts of the country were without power for periods ranging from about one hour to 90 minutes.

According to him, maintaining the temporary system has nonetheless helped prevent a potentially longer disruption to electricity supply.

Dr Jinapor assured consumers that power had been restored to most affected areas, while efforts were continuing to reconnect locations still experiencing outages.

He expressed optimism that the completion of the permanent infrastructure would strengthen the reliability and resilience of Ghana’s power transmission system.

The Minister appealed to consumers to bear with the situation as engineers work to complete the permanent solution.