GRIDCo adjudged best transmission company in W/Africa
The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) has been adjudged the best power transmission company in West Africa. GRIDCo beat competition from six other transmission companies in the ECOWAS sub-region to emerge the overall winner in the Excellence in Power Transmission and Distribution Category at the 12th edition of the West African Power Industry Convention (WAPIC) Awards ceremony held in Abuja, Nigeria.
The judgement committee, made up of industry experts, considered the competing companies’ ability to enhance the capacity of power, output and excellence in meeting the growing power needs of the people. The other key variables for selecting the winners were sustaining investment in a power project or initiative and developing technologies and processes that promoted renewable power generation.
Citation
According to a citation which accompanied the award, GRIDCo, since its inception in 2008, had operated 43 substations and about 4,000 km of high voltage (KV) transmission lines across Ghana, with the bulk of them operating at 161 KV.
It added that the company had also invested steadily in the system to increase its transmission lines to over 5,100 km and 54 substations in 2014. It had also introduced a 330KV transmission line.
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“This is intended to enhance the power transfer capacity of the National Interconnected Transmission System (NITS) and thus improve reliability of the NITS,” the citation added.
It further commended GRIDCo for the consistent investments made in the area of the NITS which would most likely contribute to uninterrupted power supply to customers near future.
Great things
The Chief Executive Officer of GRIDCo, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said although the award had come at a time that Ghana’s power industry was facing many challenges, the company would use it as a platform to improve its performance.
GRIDCo, he said, was investing in new technologies to improve its transmission networks and reduce stress, which had occasionally led to system breakdown.
