Engineers at the Kpone Thermal Plant Project are carrying out functionality tests on the combine turbine to get it ready to be fired within the next two weeks.
The turbine will inject 110 Megawatts (MW) of power into the national grid by the close of the year.
Another 110MW which represented the second stage is expected from the project to feed into the national grid by the end of February, 2016.
The plant runs on both fuel and gas, which is drawn from the West Africa Gas Pipeline from Nigeria.
The Project Manager, Francis Yao Agbenyo, disclosed this to the Minister of Power, Dr Kwabena Donkor, when he toured the Tema power enclave yesterday, to inspect progress of short, medium and long term power projects put in place to fix the current power challenges facing the country.
Ghana has been facing energy security challenges over the years, due partly to the dwindling fortunes of the country’s most singular hydropower supplier, the Volta River Authority, as a result of erratic rainfall and gas supply from Nigeria.
About 500MW of power is currently being generated from the 1,020 installed capacity of the facility.
Ghanaians are going through a load-shedding regime popularly referred to as “dumsor” an Akan expression which means power on and off.
Other projects the minster visited were the Cent power project, Sun on Asogli Power Plant and the site for the docking of the Karpower ship expected in the country possibly in three weeks from Turkey to add 234 MW of power into the grid.
Mr Agbenyo said the mechanical aspect of the Kpone project was 99 per cent complete and the electrical aspect was 85 per cent complete.
He added that the project had been delayed and use some of the electrical components of the project had become defected due to long period of storage, requiring immediate replacement adding that the essential and sensitive parts had been made available.
The Chief Executive Officer of the GRIDCO, Williams Amuna said efforts would continue into the expansion of the Kpone Project after the inauguration of the first phase, to expand the facility to add more turbines to increase the generation to between 700 and 800 MW to make the place the power hub.
Officials of Cent power project, independent power suppliers, briefed the minister saying that work was on course to produce 350 MW into the grid by September 2017 as a long term plan.
The General Manager and Director of Sun on Asogli Power (Ghana) Limited assured that work was on course to deliver 180MW by the end of the year to be followed by the same amount by the end of March 2016.
On progress of work for the docking of the Karpowership, Mr Amuna said work was 85 per cent complete awaiting the rest to be fixed when the power ship docks at the Tema Fishing Harbour.
Dr Donkor expressed the optimism that all things being equal with the progress of work done so far, it was possible to announce the end of load-shedding by the end of the year.
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