And while we're hopefully headed into cooler months, next year's dry season - particularly the months of April, May and June - are expected to be blistering. There is concern that an extended drought can lead to rolling blackouts due to load shedding. There's also speculation that the PM might get ahead of the game and call the elections early to secure their seats before the power goes out. We asked him about it yesterday.
Courtney Menzies:
"There are may speculations that you may call elections before that."
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Looks like you know more than I do. But the point is we understand that and we know that these are the three critical months that we have to address and we're working on a plan. once we get the GT generator going, we're going to be right on the edge but also when that time comes, should that time come, and God willing, it does not come because, again, the last time around, after I spoke to President Lopez Obrador, he increased the energy that we could have gotten and then the price went down censurably. At one point, it was at a dollar per KW, US and now it has gone down considerably. We expect and we hope that they're not going to cut us off. They've increased from 55 to 60MW, they've never sold 60 to us and now they are. That is one. But secondly, we have enough time to do planning because what we do - it ends up being more expensive - but what we do, well, BEL will speak to its big customers and many of its big customers have their big generators so he would tell them get off the grid, generate your own, and then we pay you for that. It's more expensive, mind you, but then the grid has more energy to share with everybody else. That's what they did in San Pedro during the load shedding, they managed to get the bigger- I know for instance, Grand Caribe and the others got off the grid, produced it, and then they had to be paying more so that the rest of the island could get. We're doing a number of things to avoid any kind of load shedding."
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