The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURC) has fined state-owned grid distributor Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) a sum of GH¢5,868,000.00 for the failure of the utility provider to give advance notice and publish planned outages for consumers as required under Regulation 39 of the PURC Regulations, 2020 (LI 2413). The regulator however determined that in order for ECG to not pass on the cost of the fine onto consumers in adjusted tariffs, ECG Board Members have been made to pay the GH¢5.8 million.

PURC explained that, the Board Members of ECG were at all material times responsible for providing strategic direction to ensure that power consumers were adequately serviced by the utility provider. This directive is meant for Board Members who were in office between 1 January to 18 March 2024.

ECG has been facing distribution challenges since the beginning of the year that have caused frequent power cuts across the country prompting calls for a load management timetable to enable consumers plan effectively, which have fallen on deaf ears.

Investigations conducted by PURC revealed that there were 4,142 outages in total to consumers within ECG’s operational areas between January and March 2024. Out of this figure, 165 (3.98%) of the total outages were ECG planned outages; 40 were announced to the public while the remaining 125 outages weren’t announced. Additionally, the regulator observed, 38 out of the 40 notices issued for a planned outage did not comply with the requisite 3-day statutory notice prescribed under Regulation 39 of LI 2413. About 163 ECG planned outages did not comply with law.

Further checks conducted by PURC on ECG transformers showed that out of 715 transformer details submitted by ECG, 31 were loaded less than 70%, 595 were loaded between 70-100% and 89 were loaded above 100%. The regulator compared the the transformer data to the total outage data for the period January to March 18, 2024 and established that, “647 outage incidents occurred between 7 pm and 11 pm. Of these 647 outage incidents, only 3 were planned outages relating to transformers. The analyses showed that the majority of the outages between 7 pm to 11 pm were as a result of load management operations by GRIDCo and faults unrelated to overloaded transformers.”

That notwithstanding, the PURC has directed the ECG Board Members who were in office from 1 January to 18 March 2024 to pay the fine amount into a dedicated fuel account under the joint control of the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Finance on or before 30th May, 2024.