We spoke to BEL Corporate communications today to discuss what's been happening with the island's power consumption, and whether they are prepared to handle the demand which is expected to increase during the Easter weekend.

Emanuel Pech, BEL Corporate Communications
"What is happening in San Pedro is, like you rightly said, the temperatures are very hot. And I just wanted to bring your attention to the fact that this is not something that is happening, in Belize, this not is something isolated to Belize. This is a situation that's happening globally and has been happening for a long period of time. I will tell you that in San Pedro, we are faced with a situation where just last year, we had projected for a certain amount of peak power demand for the island, which fell perfectly in line with the plans that we already had in place to increase the capacity for San Pedro. And this includes the installation of a mobile GT power power capacity in San Pedro. This also includes installation of battery storage solutions in San Pedro, and as part of the long term plan for San Pedro, we had the installation of the second submarine cable, which by our plans is supposed to be in place by 2027."

"It's part of our 2028 business plan, right? So what happened in 2023 is that we, San Pedro surpassed even the most optimistic projections. And when we do projections, we'll do several projections We do best-case scenario, we even do worst-case scenario projections to plan ahead. And I will tell you that 2023 surpassed even the most pessimistic of our projections for where our energy demand would have been in San Pedro. So that's the situation in a nutshell. And what we are doing now and what have we been doing since last week since this heat wave started is that we've been working with our bulk power producers. We've been with all our partners, even in collaboration with our most valuable stakeholder in San Pedro, which are our customers. We've been working on all of them, and that's why you see the hourly updates on our social media pages."

Pech reassures us that BEL has contingency plans set in place in the event that the island does experience power issues. He says while they do remain optimistic that they will not lose power, they do have a plan to control the situation. He notes that peak power demand is usually experienced every day between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon, and 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. in the evenings.

Emanuel Pech, BEL Corporate Communications "All our team is on board with managing the capacity and managing the supply for San Pedro and we are doing the utmost best to ensure that the energy supply to San Pedro remains reliable going into and throughout the Easter weekend."

"That is our plan, you know if you are talking about disruptions in the energy supply that is the last resort that we want to it's not even being considered as part of the plan you know. The plan is to address the issue with the strategy that we have going on. It seems to be working right now to manage the energy supply and we will continue to do that working with our partners, working with our stakeholders in order for us to ensure a reliable supply of energy to San Pedro at this moment going into and throughout the Easter weekend."

BEL encourages the public to be responsible and practice energy conservation where possible.