By Belize Live News Staff: The next time your power blinks off without warning, here is the chain of events behind it. Demand surges in Quintana Roo. Mexico’s state power company, CFE, trims the electricity it sells south. And Belize Electricity Limited, suddenly short of the supply that makes up about forty percent of the national total, starts load shedding, cutting sections of the country to save the grid.
That is the reality Minister of Public Utilities, Logistics and Energy Michel Chebat laid out plainly, confirming what frustrated households and businesses across Belize have suspected through this year’s outages: the country’s lights are, to a significant degree, at the mercy of a neighbour’s needs.
“We are in continuous discussion with CFE. The situation is that they themselves have shortages in Mexico and so when they experience it then here in Belize we have to load shed, right?” Chebat said, before pointing to the way out. “For us as a country it is important for us to find local means of energy production.”
To that end, the Minister disclosed a significant gathering held Wednesday, bringing together the Government, the independent power producers, the Public Utilities Commission, and BEL. “There is a certain gap that we’re trying to fill,” he said, “so that we can have energy being created here at home and to try and lessen that dependence we have on CFE.”
The homegrown pipeline is real, if slow. The 15 megawatt BAPCOL solar and battery plant at Buena Vista, Corozal, Belize’s first utility-scale solar project, is due for completion by year’s end. An 80 megawatt solar procurement is underway with the International Finance Corporation. The Saudi-financed solar project, signed three years ago and still unbuilt, is being reworked into a solar and battery hybrid. And the Macal River dams now under national ownership through Hydro Belize continue to supply about a third of BEL’s power.
Chebat is candid that independence will take major investment and time. The harder truth for consumers is that none of it helps tonight, or the next time Quintana Roo’s air conditioners surge and Belize’s grid pays for it.
The destination is clear, energy made at home, for home. The distance to it is what Belizeans, sitting in the occasional dark, are being asked to endure.
Have the outages hit your home or business, Belize? And do you believe energy independence is coming fast enough? Let us know in the comments.
