Will there be extended rolling power outages? Tonight, the best the
Public utilities Commission can say is, “maybe.” It’s described
as a fluid situation. And that’s because there are two things that military
strategists might call, “known unknowns.” The first one is the power
supply from CFE in Mexico. That company has major machine problems and earlier
this month, it informed BEL that it will have to cut it off. And then there’s
the diesel generator at Westlake Park, mile 8 on the western Highway. That’s
out of commission and being repaired.
Take those two out of the picture and Belize loses one third of its
power supply. That means of the 74 megawatts Belize uses at its peak, only about
55 is secure – the other 18 to 20 is tied up between CFE and Westlake.
But Westlake is being repaired; the parts arrive tomorrow, and government has
interceded to implore CFE for assistance. That company has revised its position
and has agreed to provide a minimum amount of power to keep the system going.
Chairman of the PUC John Avery discussed that development and the overall
situation at a press conference today.
John Avery, PUC Chairman
“BEL was informed by CFE that they would be using all their resources
to try to supply BEL with at least the minimum amount of power that they require
in order to keep all system up and running. However they still have not ruled
out the event that they would have to ask BEL at times to come off their system
completely and by that I mean not being separated from the Mexican grid but
by not taking any power from Mexico in which case as long as that gas turbine
remains down, we will have a shortfall of supply capacity in Belize and will
have to go to rotating blackouts. However like I said the situation remains
fluid. We don’t know from one hour to one hour, day to day what exactly
will happen with CFE. We expect that if CFE informs us for certain that there
will be periods that they cannot supply us with power, then BEL if it is an
extended period would likely be putting out notices telling customers of any
schedule for the areas that they live in.
In the meantime, what we would like to ask of consumers of electricity
that we can get through this period. First if there is anyway to conserve power,
lessen the demand on the system, like I said right now the demand is 74 megawatts
roughly. If there is anyway to lessen that then that could have a direct impact
on BEL having to rotate blackouts or at least it could minimize the areas that
would need to be cut off the system at anytime.
It is something that again everything is fluid. It really depends on what
we hear from CFE. If we only lose power say for 15 minutes to half hour then
really it will be no different than having a line problem or some scheduled
maintenance. But if you’re going to lose the entire supply from Mexico,
that is when you have to get into scheduling so that you don’t inconvenience
any one group more than the other. But certainly it will be something that would
have to rotated as fairly as possible.”
The other significant development is that the Minister of public utilities
who is also the NEMO Minister has used his emergency power to hammer out an
agreement for BEL to purchase an additional 8 megawatts of power from Belize
Aquaculture Limited in southern Belize. BAL presently provides 10 megawatts.
Emergency powers were required because the law states that all power purchase
agreements must be the product of competitive bidding, but with the present
state of crisis, that was waived.
And why was the Chairman of the PUC hosting a press conference about
ensuring –as best as possible – a continuous power supply? Isn’t
providing power BEL’s business. Well, seems that after taking a public
relations banging on all public media, that company is playing a speak-no-evil,
hear-no-evil type game and Avery said he felt he needed to step in and clear
the air about the outages, stressing that there is no sinister corporate strategy
behind it.
John Avery,
“Thing is like I said, there seems to be this mistrust but I don’t
think we can operate the regulator and the utility with this air of mistrust
and so we decided we have to have this press conference because I was looking
at the talk show last night and that seems to be the sentiment that this is
some conspiracy and so we felt it was in everyone’s best interest to let
people know that we’ve assessed the situation and we have confirmed that
yes it is not conspiracy.”
As regards national energy security – that is, the ability to
generate all the power Belize needs within its own borders, thus eliminating
the reliance on Mexico, Avery said that with the development of the VACA Dam
and the BELCOGEN generating facility Belize should have an additional 30 megawatts
of power which will make it reliant solely on locally produced power. But because
of low costs, Mexico will always be an accessible alternative.
Email
Print