BELMOPAN, Belize, CMC – Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) says it has been forced to implement power interruptions throughout the country after indicating that the power plant in Mexico cannot meet the high electricity demand here.
According to BEL, daily electricity demand levels have varied between 85 megawatts (MW) and 125 MW throughout the day over the past few weeks, while in-country capacity is currently a maximum of 93 MW.
“This means that BEL depends on supply from Comision Federal De Electricidad (CFE) in Mexico to meet demand for a significant portion of the day. CFE normally supplied up to 55 MW of capacity to the grid,” BEL said in a statement.
“However, we have received communication from CFE regarding challenges they are facing in sustaining the energy supply to our network, and they have advised that they may have to curtail the energy supply to Belize throughout the next 48 hours.”
BEL said it seeks to address the impacts of electricity shortages and that load shedding “will become necessary for various sections of the country to manage the available energy supply effectively.”
BEL chief executive officer John Mencias told a news conference that he wanted to “make it abundantly clear to everyone that CFE is not acting outside of the contractual arrangements with BEL.
“What we purchase from CFE is called opportunity cost energy. It used to be called economic energy, which is interruptible at any moment’s notice. However, CFE has worked with us; they have tried to give us two hours’ notice, but sometimes it is less,” he said, noting that the relationship with CFE goes way back to the 1980s.
“They have been a reliable provider of electricity for Belize. They have enabled us to keep our costs down, but importantly, they have also provided us with great support. To put that in context, our systems are interconnected.
“We are tiny compared to them. Any jolt in our system, they can handle it for us, and that is the importance of being connected to a big brother like CFE. However, we know they have also been having generation shortage problems and transmission congestion problems.”
Mencias said that’s why BEL has been emphasizing the need to build in-country generation capacity to meet the peak demand within Belize.
“That does not mean we don’t want to continue our relationship with CFE. We want to continue that relationship with CFE. They provide us, as I said, with grid support, and when the price of energy from CFE is low, we want to purchase it. It’s to our advantage.
“However, our focus since 2019 has been on energy security. Well, from before. But we have made a point; we are driving the point that we have to stop relying on CFE to meet peak demand in the country,” he told reporters.
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