Parts of the capital city of Ghana, Accra, have been affected by intermittent power black outs since the beginning of February 2001, due to a generator being taken out of service for repairs. The Volta River Authority (VRA), a state owned utility company, took one of the six generating units off line at its main hydro plant at Akosombo, 100km northeast of Accra.
The generating unit is being retrofitted at a cost of US$115M. VRA sources said that the completed project will improve the efficiency of all six generating units for the next 30 years. The retrofit project, jointly financed by the European Invest-ment Bank and the World Bank, will replace old turbine runners with more efficient and technologically superior ones.