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Jun 25, 2002

Silver lining of floods is record hydropower

Much of the country is holding its collective breath as overcast skies and intermittent showers threaten to bring renewed flooding to parts of the Toledo, Stann Creek, Cayo and Belize Districts. While rain forecast for tonight should be nowhere near the quantity which fell last week, with the ground already saturated it will not take much to produce localised flooding in some areas. Toledo has been the hardest hit, with several key bridges still underwater while traffic to and from Spanish Lookout has been disrupted by closure of the ferry and high water covering the newly constructed Iguana Creek Bridge.

One bit of silver lining to the dark cloud of precipitation, however, has been that the unusually heavy rains have meant record breaking production of electricity at the Mollejon hydro facility. B.E.L. plant manager Stephen Usher told News 5 that on Sunday Mollejon produced a record peak output of thirty point zero four megawatts, even though the facility is rated at a maximum of only twenty-five point two. The added power was generated when a flash flood significantly raised the height of the reservoir and thus produced unusually high pressure to spin the turbines.

So far, this year production at Mollejon is slightly ahead of last year’s pace when the plant produced ninety-one gigawatts of electricity for the year. Highest production came in 2000 with ninety-three point five gigawatts of power generated. Belize Electricity Limited predicts that construction of the Chalillo dam will enable Mollejon to produce much higher levels of power for the national grid.


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