More Load Shedding as B.E.L. Faces Challenges Providing Electricity  

Belize continues to face an energy crisis, despite B.E.L. being able to bring online the gas turbine at its Mile Eight facility.  Earlier today, the senior management of Belize Electricity Limited. met with reporters and provided an update on the challenges that the utility company is presently grappling with.  Those issues have been brought on by extreme temperatures and damage to B.E.L.’s infrastructure.  To make matters worse, the company is unable to receive energy from C.F.E. when power lines and other infrastructure are out of service.  So what does this mean for customers?  B.E.L.’s General Manager for Employee and Corporate Services, Dawn Sampson-Nunez says that more load shedding can be expected in the days ahead.

 

Dawn Sampson-Nunez, General Manager, B.E.L.

“The challenges that we’re experiencing with respect to generation supply, it is one that we can get through as a community.  We can get through it in terms of support from the community in the form of energy conservation.  Having said that, a number of issues and each of them we have to manage.  As you would have heard earlier from our C.E.O., so there is climate change, it’s an issue that is being experienced worldwide.  We’re experiencing extreme temperatures, dry weather conditions.  That’s having an impact on our infrastructure.  So, a number of the outages that would have been experienced, I believe, in particular up north is a result of the weather.  There’s damage to the infrastructure.  When that occurs, there are issues with respect to being able to take energies from C.F.E. and of course being able to then do some readjustments to ensure that we can meet the demand on the other side of wherever that damage occurs.”