The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has disclosed that the Electricity Company of Ghana’s (ECG) attribution of the recent power outages between 7pm and 11pm to transformer overload is false.

The ECG had said that transformer overload was the cause of many of the localised lights-offs in parts of the country.

The power distribution company explained that the number of people per a transformer has increased beyond what is necessary over the years.

The company, however, assured customers that “transformer upgrading and new projects are on-going to relieve these transformers to ensure a more reliable power supply.”

In a swift response, the PURC requested data on ECG transformers to validate their public statement.

According to the PURC, analysis of the data submitted showed that out of 715 transformer details submitted, 31 were loaded less than 70%, 595 were loaded between 70-100% and 89 were loaded above 100%.

The PURC in a report indicated that the data submitted by ECG was further compared to the total outage data provided by ECG 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, the Commission said 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.

“ECG’s attribution of the outages between 7 pm and 11 pm to transformer overload was therefore not factually accurate,” the PURC stated.

It added that the causes of these outages are the subject of investigations already being undertaken by the Commission.