B.E.L. Says Power Should Be Stable by End of May

Over the past several weeks, residents across the country have been experiencing power outages that span from a few minutes to several hours. On Wednesday, residents of San Pedro underwent an exceptionally long outage which clocked in at around fourteen hours. These outages are the result of several factors, namely B.E.L.’s largest energy provider, CFE is no longer able to provide Belize with fifty-five megawatts of power as Mexico is facing its own energy crisis. C.E.O. John Mencias explained what B.E.L. plans to do to rectify the situation immediately.

 

John Mencia, C.E.O., Belize Electricity Ltd.

“But immediately, what do we have in place?  Immediately. What we have in place is that we’re upgrading or gas turbine. As I said at mile eight. And that is expected to come back online by early next week.  It was originally at nineteen megawatts. It’s being upgraded to thirty megawatts. So next week, thirty megawatts of additional capacity is coming online. Once that comes online, we will be able to bridge the generation shortage that we’re experiencing right now.  And then, by the end of May,  we’ll be adding another twenty megawatts of capacity gas turbine in San Pedro.  So that will, that means that by the end of me, we’re compared to where we are now, we’re putting back  or we’re installing on the grid 50 megawatts  of additional capacity  that will put us in a position to be able to meet peak demand.  Well, beyond. The next twelve months and more than likely up to about eighteen months. And what that does, it gives us a window, but only a window to start to put in place and we must move immediately to put in place the capacity. The additional capacity that I just spoke to you about the additional solar, the battery storage solutions. And our wind, wind power plant as well. Of the past few weeks, Belize has undergone several disruptions in power. So that is what it does. Now, once we put the additional 20 megawatts of gas turbine capacity on San Pedro, it means that if we ever lose that cable, or we have a problem with the transformers we did last night, we will be able to resort to generation from the gas turbine that will be in San Pedro. Because the demand on San Pedro, we are seeing is increasing. Is probably around eighteen megawatts. The capacity of that gas turbine is about twenty megawatts that we be installing in San Pedro.”