SP Businesses Trying to Manage Power Outages

It will be another three weeks before the Belize Electricity Limited will be able to install a gas turbine capable enough to meet San Pedro’s increasing power demands. Earlier this week, the island town experienced two major power outages, and later suffered a third which lasted only two hours. According to Belize Rural South Area Representative Andre Perez, that last interruption was caused by a technical glitch on the island itself. He also said that the spate of blackouts in San Pedro has delivered a blow to the businesses that depend on power supply. News Five’s Marion Ali visited San Pedro today to get an idea of how the interruption of power supply has impacted the flow of business there. Here’s that report.

 

Ciani Castaneda, Nurse, San Carlos Medical Clinic

“For our medication that needs to be kept cool, we use the ice bags, so we can put them in a cooler and then keep them there to maintain its temperature that’s how it’s supposed to be kept.”

 

Marion Ali, Reporting

The series of power outages in San Pedro have forced businesses to return to days gone by, when electricity supply did not exist, and they had to find creative ways of keeping their perishable stocks and supplies cold. Nurse Ciani Castaneda shared with News Five that the interruptions in power supply have forced the staff at San Carlos Medical Clinic to resort to twentieth century techniques to refrigerate their supplies and samples. And for the rest of the time without power, they sanitize the clinic.

 

Ciani Castaneda

“During a blackout, we usually use that time for clean, which is the sanitization of the materials, the sterilization of equipment, and then we also used to clean the pharmacy, the shelves and other stuff. We still continue taking lab samples, blood samples, and as we say, use the same technique as with our medication. We use ice bags to keep it cool and then we send it to our lab. Sometimes it does affect because the doctor uses some equipment, especially the light to assess the patients, so it does affect us here.”

 

Medical exams using electrical equipment are just one area of business that San Pedranos have had to endure inconvenience since Wednesday. Restaurants have also been affected by the setback. For Elvi’s Kitchen that already owns a generator, the impact is not as severe as having to throw away spoilage. But they still must incur expenses they ordinarily wouldn’t have to budget for, as chef and co-owner of Elvi’s Kitchen, Jennie Staines told us.

 

Jennie Staines, Chef/Co-owner, Elvi’s Kitchen

“We have been lucky that we have a generator, but the consumption of the fuel was very high for us because our generator is run by butane. And we had to tap the tank and the following day we had to do the same because we used 80 percent of the big tank. We have to absorb the loss. If we don’t balance out, we have to absorb it because we would never bring up any prices.”

 

A vendor at a tamales shop on Barrier Reef Drive told us off-camera that they have to close the business when the electricity is cut and they cannot grind corn to make more to sell.

 

Voice of: Tamales Vendor

“Whenever our first batch of tamalitos finish, we cannot grind anymore because the current is gone. Then we automatically have to close or stay – try wait to make the current come back, and if it not come back, then we have to close. We just manage it with what we make for the day. Once the current goes, then that’s it for the day. We close and we go home.”

 

We checked in with quite a few hotels and resorts that did not want to go public with their status for fear of losing more business. One resort manager did share with us that they lost money when a few tourists checked out early. That aside, they also incurred additional expenses to purchase ice and generator fuel, as well as to pay for portable generators to be connected. The economic impacts suffered across the town is one that sent the Belize Rural South Area Representative, Andre Perez into a meeting during the latter part of today with relevant parties to discuss the situation.

 

Andre Perez, Area Representative, Belize Rural South

“I certainly cannot quantify it, but certainly the numbers are quite a significant amount here. As it relates to restaurants, hotels, not only that, but at home as well. People who are working, being fully employed, they lost as well. And including some damages as well in, in appliances. And then again last night we had another outage of about two hours and we were told that it was an emergency that they had to do at the southern part of the island.”

 

Perez says that B.E.L. has assured that the problem will be remedied by the end of this month.  But Perez questions B.E.L’s investments on the island and asks for priority, considering that San Pedro is one of the nation’s most popular tourism destination.

 

Andre Perez

“I’m not here to point fingers, but rather is this is a indication of the growth of the economy. Especially as it relates to tourism, San Pedro has been growing by leaps and bounds. So I think B.E.L is playing catch up to supply that energy that we are consuming. While we are getting short-term solutions right now to just to deal with this for the month of May, we need to know what is going up ahead because we need long-term plans as well.”

 

C.E.O, John Mencias explained how BEL will expand its capacity over the next ten years.

 

John Mencias, C.E.O, Belize Electricity Limited

“For the period now – 2023 to 2032, the next 10 years, which is the plan that we expect a huge spike in demand because of the rate of the growth that we have been seeing. We are projecting that this is what the increase in peak demand will be in this country driven mainly, it seems by tourism and to an extent, by climate change as well. But then you also see the planned capacity additions. It’s made up of a combination of upgrades to the gas turbine at mile eight and the new gas turbine that will be deployed in San Pedro, about 80 megawatts of solar plant, about 40 megawatts of wind power plant, and about 40 megawatts of battery energy storage solutions.”

 

Marion Ali for News Five.