BEL is sourcing additional local power sources to assist with the ongoing issue of load shedding. Within the past few days you might have noticed a text, email or release circulated regarding designated load shedding times across various parts of the country.
We asked the PM on this and he says that they are looking at ways to directly address Belize's continuing energy issues:
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Well that has always been a problem from since 2024, as we know Belize has been, the demand for electricity has been growing exceedingly fast and likewise in the southern part of Mexico they're having the same problems. They should have had a 1.2 gigawatts of electricity already online but they seem to be having a lot of problems, I think the plants have been built in Mexico but now they're having problems on how they can get the natural gas to power and fire up those plants. So we're in conversation with them but at the same time we are also taking our own precautions. We're happy that it's raining so the dam is starting to full up again so we will be able to get some more electricity from them. We also, BEL had signed on with a company to be able to have a standby generator, the generator should have been here towards the month of May I think but because of the war in Iraq it has messed up you know the shipping and that is why we have not gotten it by now. We are hoping by the end of the month or sometime next month that standby generator will be here. Once that standby generator is in Belize so once there's any kind of load shedding then we will be able to fire that up for us to be able to ensure that we don't have any load shedding in Belize."
Reporter
"So these short term measures can potentially eliminate load shedding altogether in Belize and prevent these blackouts?"
John Briceno:
"Well that is the expectation, and also as you all know we have already have called for or have done the requests for proposals for solar and we expect that sometime by the middle of next year at the very latest the end of next year we're going to have a lot more solar into the system."
