Power Outages Scheduled Across Belize Tonight for Grid Stability

Nine areas across the country will experience power outages tonight starting at seven o’clock.  From seven to nine-thirty tonight, portions of the Belize District including Belize City as well as areas in San Ignacio and Orange Walk will experience power outage as the Belize Electricity Limited continues its shedding of power.  Meanwhile, from nine-thirty to midnight, areas in Belmopan, San Ignacio, Corozal, and Dangriga will have their share of blackouts.  A notice was released by BEL earlier today.  According to the company, tonight’s shedding is necessary to maintain the stability of the country’s grid.  Earlier this week, BEL’s CEO, John Mencias explained that while they share a good relationship with the Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE)in Mexico, the amount of energy they can provide to Belize vary from day to day.

John Mencias, CEO, Belize Electricity Limited: “For an electrical grid you’re matching always demand with supply. So demand will vary it depends on how people are consuming. You’re talking about Mexico that’s a huge place right a hundred and what thirty million people. I think the peak demand in that same peninsular region is nearly 3,000 megawatts and they have been having issues of their own. Shortages of generation capacity. Remember the peninsula region is connected to the central region through transmission lines. They also have generation capacity within their region. So they now have to manage the demand versus the local generation that they have in the region and what comes from the central region of Mexico. So they’re kind of doing what we do. We have local generation and we have supply from them and they have had constraints of their own, their economy is growing, the weather is hotter than usual overall. And so these constraints occur.”