The Akosombo Generating Station, located in the Eastern Region of Ghana, has been supporting Ghana’s economic development with over 50% of its electricity demand since its construction in the 60s. With average annual availability factor of around 95%, the Akosombo Hydroelectric Power Plant has been “over depended” on. Akosombo Generating Station (Akosombo GS) was “bequeathed” to the people of Ghana by Ghana’s first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who had a vision of making Ghana the industrial hub of Africa, hence the need for reliable power to drive industrial growth. The Plant has proven to be dependable national asset - a treasured inheritance - hence, the name “Legacy Asset”. Managing this Legacy Asset has been very challenging, particularly when it comes to maintenance. The Akosombo Plant has an installed capacity of 1020MW (approximately a third of the Ghana’s installed capacity of 3,422MW as of April 2016). Due to the size of the individual generators (170MW), shutting down a Unit at Akosombo GS for maintenance is always a challenge. In addition to the size of the Akosombo generators, the high demand for cheaper hydropower makes it difficult to get outage approvals to carry out planned maintenance and equipment upgrades. This notwithstanding, the custodians of this legacy asset have managed to modernize the plant and maintain a very high availability over the period. This paper seeks to share the various equipment upgrades and maintenance activities that have been carried out to extend the economic life and maintain the high reliability of Akosombo Generating Station after operating successfully for over 35 years. The paper also highlights the strategies adopted to implement the station’s maintenance plan in spite of outage constraint resulting from high dependability of the asset.
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