Emmanuel Antwi-Darkwa, chief executive of the Volta River Authority in Ghana, will speak during the Utility Executive Roundtable at HYDROVISION International 2023.
Antwi-Darkwa began his career with the VRA since 1985. He held a variety of roles in the authority’s engineering department and took up an appointment (secondment) as Director of Power at the Ministry of Energy from 2002 to 2009. IN 2012, Antwi-Darkwa resigned from VRA and established a private engineering consultancy practice.
He has been chief executive of VRA since 2018, after being named acting chief executive in 2017. In this position, he helps advance VRA’s vision, mission, strategy and core values. VRA “exists to power economies and raise the living standards of the people of Ghana and West Africa,” according to its website.
Antwi-Darkwa has a bachelor of science in civil engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, a master of public administration from Harvard University and a master of business administration from the University of Dundee.
VRA was established in 1961 with the mandate to generate, transmit and distribute electricity under the Volta River Development Act, Act 46 of the Republic of Ghana. In 2005, after a major amendment to the VRA Act in the context of the Ghana Government Power Sector Reforms, VRA’s mandate is largely restricted to generation of electricity.
The authority operates a total installed electricity generation capacity of 2,520 MW, from the 1,020 MW Akosombo and Kpong Generation Stations on the Volta River, with a complement of 2.5 MW Solar PV Plant located at Navrongo. VRA also owns thermal plants in the Western Operational Area (WOA) in Aboadze near Takoradi and Eastern Operational Area (EOA) within the Tema enclave.
In October 2020, VRA announced that the 160 MW Kpong generating station was commissioned after its retrofit. The powerhouse was commissioned in 1982 and contains four turbine-generator units. The overall objective of the project was to upgrade and replace the necessary systems/components to ensure a further 30 years of safe, reliable and efficient operation of the generating units and power plant equipment.
The utility executive roundtable will feature several C-level executives from electricity generating companies, discussing current hot topics for the global hydropower industry. The session is open to all attendees.
Click here to learn more about HYDROVISION International 2023, which will take place July 11 to 13 in Charlotte, N.C., U.S.
