By: OrePulse

Ghana's state grid operator, GRIDCo, says power supply to Kumasi and northern Ghana should improve by December, once a set of transmission upgrades now underway are completed.

GRIDCo Chief Executive Frank Asirifi Otchere gave the assurance in a briefing to the Ashanti Regional Minister on projects aimed at improving electricity supply in the greater Kumasi area. He said the company has already replaced a 66 megavolt-ampere transformer at the Ridge substation with a 145 megavolt-ampere unit, which has been in service since June, and is adding a fifth feeder to the four that currently supply the Electricity Company of Ghana in the area.

The centerpiece of the upgrade is the Kumasi-Anwomaso transmission line, including the Anwomaso-to-Ridge section, where capacity is being raised from about 360 megawatts to 1,000 megawatts. Otchere said that work is expected to be completed by the end of November. According to GRIDCo, the contractor has already dismantled the old conductor and transmission towers, completed new foundations, installed replacement towers, and is now in the process of stringing new conductor along the route.

"When it is completed, we are expecting to see increased capacity to serve demand in Kumasi," Otchere said.

GRIDCo said the combination of upgrades should improve grid reliability in the region and help ease concerns over outages that have persisted in Kumasi and parts of northern Ghana. Otchere described the projects as critical and said they had been prioritized for completion by December.

The latest assurance echoes a similar one given in December 2025 by Ghana's Ministry of Energy and Green Transition, which at the time apologized for outages in Kumasi and the wider Ashanti Region after additional generation capacity from AKSA Energy was brought online at Anwomaso. That episode highlighted how both generation and transmission bottlenecks have contributed to recurring power problems in Ghana's second-largest urban area.

Kumasi, the historic capital of the Ashanti Region and one of Ghana's largest cities, has faced persistent power supply issues tied to constraints on the transmission network's ability to move electricity from generation sources to local distribution. The current line upgrade is intended to address one of those structural bottlenecks directly by substantially increasing the capacity of the corridor feeding the city and surrounding areas.

GRIDCo did not provide a specific cost figure for the Kumasi-area upgrades or say whether additional transmission investment would be needed to meet demand growth in the region beyond the current round of works.

Ghana's electricity network has faced sustained demand growth in recent years as both residential and industrial consumption have expanded, adding pressure to transmission corridors such as the one connecting Kumasi to the national grid. Officials have said continued investment in transmission capacity will be necessary to keep pace with demand growth in the Ashanti Region and other parts of northern Ghana.