Belize City to Undergo Power Outage of Indeterminable Length

B.E.L. has commenced routine load shedding, which limits power in various areas of the country. Today, several parts of Belize City will experience the scheduled outages as the company attempts to manage the capacity. B.E.L. General Manager Jose Moreno explained what we can expect of this scheduled outage.

 

Jose Moreno, General Manager, Belize Electricity Ltd.

“As I think we have explained earlier, we have prepared a program or a schedule for load shedding based on a forecast, on a demand forecast that we have prepared for the day.  That demand forecast establishes more or less how much demand we’re going to do by hour.  Based on the generation availability at that hour,  and given the  restrictions imposed to us by the lack of supply from, the lack of adequate supply from CFE, and our own generation sources, then we established, you know,  a plan,  Taking into consideration areas that we can, where can we can do early, where it is better to do later at night and also we take into consideration the size of those areas, the size of those heaters. Belize City, I know it’s a business district, so we’re trying to, if we need to, because we need to right now, especially right now at three o’clock, We are going to be  short of about thirty megawatts. That is, that calls for the outage of an entire Belize city. We’re not going to do that.  So, if we touch areas in Belize City, we’ll do it at an earlier time than what we would do on a rural area.  So, I think we have prepared a proposed schedule that I think Customer Care and PR have already shared with, with our customers and employees. And if the load materializes, if those restrictions continue, then those load sharing schedules are affected. So it’s something that is fluid, right? Let’s say to, in the next hour or so, we lose one of our generation sources. It will need to be adjusted. But, overall, we will follow a plan that takes into consideration the sensitivities of the areas where we plan to do. There are some areas that we did not expect to  launch in Belize City at Six. That’s where the hospital is where the hospitals are. Areas of government offices in Belmopan. Health centers, police stations, and so on. So we take into consideration those areas. Areas that we might have of concern with respect to crime. So we are very conscious and we put all of those factors into the plan.”