Solar Home Systems needed to address power problems

Solar Home Systems needed to address power problems
By:Mary Mensah, ACCRA
The Board Chairman of the Energy Commission has stressed the need for the immediate deployment of Solar Home Systems (SHS) to address the current challenges facing the country.
He said the deployment of renewable energy systems could also be applied to achieve the objective of further lowering  consumer demand on the power supply system.
Rooftop Solar
Dr Kwame Ampofo, who said this at a stakeholders meeting on rooftop solar installation in Accra yesterday  said if all homes could have their lighting loads and other small appliances such as radios and fans removed from the grid and placed on SHS ,they  could  be some reduction in the  grid load .
He said this would be good for the energy economy and would also result in continuous power for beneficiaries but with  lower electricity bills.
Electricity Consumption
The chairman said a cursory look at the electricity consumption profile of the Ghanaian economy indicated that the industrial and residential sectors of the economy held the biggest potential for making sufficient impact on the power supply system through demand management.
“It is for this reason that we have selected the residential sector  to be the avenue for achieving significant reduction in the load profile of the power system,” he said.
He said even though there were  several technological interventions available to manage the residential load, a desirable technology was the deployment of solar photo voltaic technology,especially packed as Solar Home System (SHS).
He said it was common knowledge that the power sector of the country was facing a number of challenges the combination of which had led to a gaping imbalance between the electricity supply capacity of the national grid and electricity demand.
Load Shedding
According to him, the challenges were  due to poor hydrology, erratic and unreliable fuel supplies and also the non-availability  of some generating units and to respond to these, the utilities were compelled to impose  a load-shedding regime of between 350 and 600 megawatts.
He said to quickly ease the pressure on the electricity supply system ,there was  the need to look at the demand side of the energy balance where there were a lot of opportunities for addressing the current challenges.
Energy Efficiency
This, he said, included energy efficiency initiatives, responsible consumer behaviour and a shift to non-grid renewable energy systems to quickly ease the pressure on the electricity supply system and offer the needed relief that the country needed.
He said to achieve these objectives ,the Energy Commission was proposing a market approach for  the self-sustaining deployment of the SHS.
Quick Read
A meeting with stakeholders to discuss how  the housing industry could take advantage of the country’s abundant solar resources has  opened in Accra .