The energy efficiency situation in Ghana

Abstract

Ghana's electricity sector has long been saddled with challenges regarding supply security and power quality. The existing power plants are not able to attain full generation capacity due to fuel supply constraints, as well as the uncertainty of rainfall and water inflows into the hydroelectric power plants. There has been an imbalance between demand and supply in the country with a shortage of 25% of peak power reported in year 2014–2015. In dealing with the energy crises, the focus of the country’s energy sector has been on the installation of additional thermal power plants. However, capacity additions face a number of obstacles such as the requirement for high capital investments, timely approvals to build new power plants, and there has been increasing inflation problem. Therefore, securing adequate supplies to meet rapidly growing demand remains a challenge, at least in the short-term. Coupled with this is the country's electrical appliance market, which has been flooded with imports of used low-efficiency appliances from overseas. As the country achieves middle-income status the number of households that can afford major household appliances is expected to increase, with the prospect of many consumers buying inefficient appliances; thereby unnecessarily burdening the national grid. While energy efficiency (EE) is internationally recognised as a low-cost, readily available resource that could help improve electricity supply security, its implementation in Ghana has, only recently, been given serious attention. This paper provides a review of energy efficiency initiatives undertaken by the regulating agencies responsible for energy issues. It provides a comprehensive overview of the current energy efficiency status of three household appliances, namely refrigerators, air conditioners and lighting systems. The review indicates that EE measures carried out especially in the replacement of incandescent lamp with compact fluorescent light (CFL) made significant savings that offset the national electricity peak demand by 200–240MW.