We also spoke to Marshalleck in his role as Chairman of BEL.
As we've been reporting, Belize's power generation capacity problems persist and they are carrying over into 2025.
BEL is warning about the possibility of rolling blackouts around the dry, hot season in April of next year. That's why they've requested that GOB declare a power generation emergency so that they can green light power production projects without all the red tape.
According to the chairman, it all comes down to the weather. If the heat picks up, the way it did over the past couple of years, the demand will outstrip supply.
However, there are some measures BEL has put in place that may provide extra energy in times of scarcity. He told us more via Zoom.
Andrew Marshalleck, Chairman, BEL
"They tested it. I believe up to yesterday was giving 16 and a half megawatts, which is more than enough to supply all of San Pedro."
Jules Vasquez:
"Heading into the into the next year's dry. What do you all anticipate with this being online and the additional power at mile 8, and also what have you all heard from the PUC, if anything?"
Andrew Marshalleck, Chairman, BEL
"Yes, we still anticipate that there will be problems meeting overall demand if the weather pattern that is now evolving repeats itself the last two years and if conditions in Mexico continue as they are because they are experiencing shortfalls as well. And then that trickles over to us because when they have to meet their demand, of course they can't supply us with all the power they can otherwise normally supply. So we anticipate that there will be periods of there will be some difficulty meeting demand, assuming everything goes the way they did the last two years, which I have no reason to expect that there will be much different."
Jules Vasquez:
"So in the best case scenario, what do you foresee happening to forestall, you know, imminent outages in the second quarter of 2025?"
Andrew Marshalleck, Chairman, BEL
"Well, it all depends on whether if we have the same weather patterns, if it's nice and cool as it is now, there will be no problem. But of course, you can't plan on that. In terms of additional capacity, we have the additional capacity provided by the the Westlake GT and the additional capacity provided by the San Pedro GT. But even with those, if there's significant shortfall on the Mexican side, there will be not enough to meet all demand and you will end up with some load shedding like you did last year."
"But we are a little better off than we were last year because we do at least have the GT's, the additional capacity of the GT's, which is an additional it's hard to one, but that used to be 19 so an additional ten from Westlake and an additional 20 from San Pedro. So we do have an additional 30 megawatts on the system available to us that wasn't available last year."
"The solution to this has been to introduce utility scale solar. We know this and if that's introduced, the whole situation will regularize within a few years. So the priority is to introduce it as quickly as we can and that's why we've gone to the emergency procurement."
"What that is, is not rooftop solar, people putting panels on a rooftop, It's people installing solar over acres and acres of land, doing a solar farm and then dumping that power on to the grid directly."
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