Do you recall when you hit your leg against the centre table trying to navigate your way through the darkness in your room? Yes, that’s the kind of inconvenience ECG never says sorry for. However, ECG has finally explained the darkness, and said things we have heard multiple times before. “Ghana’s power outages are not dumsor, they are upgrades. The bills are not overcharging, they are corrections”, they said. They promised the GHC3 billion for the grid overhaul will not drown in individual pockets, but rather fly on drones.
At a press briefing on April 20, ECG Managing Director Ing. Julius Kpekpena announced that Ghana’s power grid is undergoing a 24-month infrastructure overhaul. Aging transformers are being upgraded and weak points are being reinforced. Furthermore, drone technology is being deployed to detect faults in real time. The message is clear: the light is off because ECG is thinking about the light. A thinking that requires darkness to be useful.
In the Ashanti Region, Oti Region, and Volta Region, residents have been advised to brace for intermittent disruptions. “Brace” is the operative word. You brace for a storm and brace for impact. You brace when someone tells you the light will go off and your bill will go up, but you should show gratitude because there shall be a drone flying to detect faults on your behalf.
One thing I have deduced from these sort of statements is that, Ghanaian leaders when they want (or even pretend) to implement something, it’s mostly pure extravaganza.
President Mahama has assured Ghanaians that these outages are “not dumsor.” Mahama and dumsor in the same sentence is PTSD inducing. If you know, you know. However, speaking during an inspection of newly acquired transformers, the president explained that government has procured 2,500 transformers to replace ageing ones nationwide. He cited an example in Nungua, where a transformer installed 22 years ago is being replaced because the community has expanded beyond its capacity. The logic is sound, but it only means that, “nom nsuo fa twɛn ɔpɛ“—until there is stable light again.
The Bill That Arrives Like a Threat
But the outages are only half the story. The other half is the bill.
ECG has rejected claims of deliberate overcharging, stating that recent spikes in electricity bills are the result of tariff corrections rather than new charges. Management disclosed that investigations revealed many customers had been under-billed for years, with some still charged based on outdated 2021 tariff rates. The customers deliberately under-billed themselves and paid less for the electricity they used. Now they have been caught red handed, hence the comeuppance is to pay ECG back.
Let me sit with that again. ECG is actually saying that for five years, they have been charging you the wrong price. They were charging you too little. You thought you were paying for electricity. You were actually receiving a gift. The gift has now ended. The correction has arrived and your bill has increased by over 60 percent. The anger your are feeling now is not about the correction but rather about the gift you did not know you were receiving. The gift became the problem, and the correction is the solution which is expensive than any bill you have seen before.
One consumer, whose wife was abroad and children in boarding school, deliberately reduced electricity usage in his largely unoccupied home. Despite this, he received the same bill consistently each month. After installing a solar hybrid system to eliminate reliance on the grid entirely, the billing pattern remained unchanged. The meter does not read consumption. The meter rather reads destiny in 4k.
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The Cash Waterfall That Will Not Quench Your Thirst
ECG also announced the consolidation of its revenue collection system. More than 80 separate accounts have been merged into a single “cash waterfall” mechanism to ensure transparent allocation of funds across the power sector. A cash waterfall. The name suggests something flowing, and something cool. Also, it suggests something that arrives at your doorstep like a stream in the dry season. But this waterfall flows from your pocket to the Independent Power Producers. You are the source of the river that begins at your prepaid or postpaid meter.
Energy analysts say the success of the ongoing GHC3 billion upgrade will depend on execution and public communication. Execution means the drones must fly. Public communication means you must understand that the darkness is a drill. The drill is preparation, the preparation is for a future when the light will stay on. That future is not today. Today is rather the upgrade which has characteristic outages that Ghanaians must endure fully without complaint.
The ECG Ghana Upgrade Cannot See in the Dark
So the drone will be deployed, and it will hover over the grid, detecting faults, scanning for weaknesses, searching for problems. The problem will be that the light will be off and the drone will not see in the dark. Seeing in the dark is not even an easy task for a drone. And guess what will be fixed. Absolutely nothing.
The Brewed Satire
Disclaimer: Exaggerated for a satiric effect.
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