BEL warns of possible load shedding measures

As the government presented an energy plan moving forward, the reality of the situation is that there is still a road of struggles ahead when it comes to power supply.  With the demand increasing in both Belize and Mexico and the high temperatures continue in the region, the next two weeks might see more power shedding.  The Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) told the media today that it is hoping to keep its customers updated and informed, signaling another few weeks of insufficient in-country electricity generation. Over the past two weeks, the company has suffered from several problems ranging from infrastructural damages due to weather and wildfires, to the loss of energy from two of its main Independent power suppliers. Yesterday, the company learned that Belcogen will be offline for two weeks due to repairs and, similarly, BAPCOL needs to complete repairs and will be unable to provide any power for the next six days. So, the company negotiated with its Mexican power supplier and it agreed to increase its energy supply to BEL from 0-15 megawatts at night and 30-40 during the day, which is now in effect. But if things weren’t already bad, the company expects that the 50 megawatts provided by Fortis Belize to reduce significantly in the next two weeks if there is no rainfall, as the reservoir at the Chalio Dam is depleting. However, the company expects its San Pedro gas turbine to go online between June 10 -15, which will stabilize the current shortfall of energy. In the meantime, Karique Marin, BEL’s Manager of Distribution Planning & Engineering, says the company is asking residents to do their part and conserve as much energy as possible to ensure BEL does not need to implement any load-shedding measures. 

Karique Marin, Manager of Distribution Planning and Engineering: “From now to June 15th what we’re looking at is trying to manage the varying independent power producers across the country to ensure that we can serve as much customers as possible. What we’re doing is to try  to minimize the load shedding. We are working with our large customers to ask them to provide support so they would go on generators so that we minimize the load shedding, do not have as much load shedding during that period. Our aim of course is to supply every customer all times throughout the day. However as the generators across the country experience issues we do from time to time have to have these load shedding. Our plans of course is to work with all customers, try to get our gas turbine in San Pedro online which is currently projected for June 15th. Once that comes online that gives us an additional 20 megawatts. It gives us a bit of breathing space however the hydroelectric dams are reducing their output. So we do while we’re working to get that online we do realize that the resources in country is depleting but that is one of the big positives that we’re looking forward to.”

BEL’s General Manager of Employee and Corporate Services, Dawn Sampson-Nuñez, stressed the importance of its customers doing their part to conserve energy. She explained that while BAPCOL is expected to complete its repairs in the next six days, it could take possibly longer for the company to come back online. 

Dawn Sampson – Nunez, General Manager, Employee and Corporate Services: “There are about three machines that supply us with power from BAPCOL. They will be taking out one unit at a time. And each time they take out a unit it’s about two days that they’ve indicated to us that they will need to be offline. So again we’re managing the situation at BAPCOL. The situation with BELCOGEN they expect to be out for about two weeks. It is possible that they  can come back before as well it might take a little longer. We’re managing the weather related outages, the impact that it’s having on our transmission system. So in a nutshell where we are at this point in time is that there may be the need for load shedding from time to time. And again our commitment in those circumstances is to communicate with our customers as best as possible but really load shedding is always a last option. We continue to encourage energy conservation, the more greater the effort is to conserve energy then the less likely it is for load shedding or al least the areas that would be affected would be smaller areas.”

In the last couple of days, BEL paid CFE almost 94 cents per kilowatt. According to the company, in April its bill was 20 million, and this month it was 30 million.