So, as you heard, the prognosis is not good. And that's because there are not enough local sources of power to provide a stable supply of energy to Belize. For years, we have relied on CFE power from Mexico to take up the shortfall - but as power demands in the Yucatan increase - they are forced to prioritize their consumers over Belize.
And that's why Chairman Marshalleck says they are moving quickly to try and mobilize two solar power farms in Maskall and Chan Chen to make up that shortfall. He spoke about the various means of getting more power on line:
Andrew Marshalleck, Chairman, Belize Electricity Ltd.
"BEL is confident that we will manage through the current situation, there might be one or two outages, but there's no serious threat to any prolonged outages at this time. In the short term, to shore up things, BEL will be looking to procure some portable generators to shore up power generation in areas of high demand and in other strategic locations. And in the longer term, within the next twelve to fifteen months, we'll be looking to provoke the construction of generation facilities that are currently in the pipeline, but have seem to become stuck in there for one reason or another. Specifically, we're talking about two solar farms by BAPCO, one in Chan Chen and one in Maskall that has been on the table for very many years and really needed to happen yesterday, and two, the construction of a rice generating plant in southern Belize. That's a reciprocating internal combustion engine and that's been on the table for many years too and just can't seem to come out the other end. And had it been that those agreements which were submitted from all the way back to January last year had been approved, then we would have had that extra 15 megawatts of power when we experience this heat wave. Instead, we still don't and still don't have an agreement for construction to start. So we need to provoke that."
BEL continues to encourage consumers to unplug devices when not in use as a means of conserving power.
