Blackouts spread nationwide as Mexico cuts power
If you are watching this newscast live at six-thirty, then consider yourself lucky, as almost half your fellow Belizeans cannot. The reason is a massive series of rolling power outages that were initiated this morning by Belize Electricity Limited. Worsening generation problems in Mexico have left Belize holding a bag full of empty promises and the real possibility of higher rates in the future. News 5’s Stewart Krohn spoke to B.E.L. chief executive Lynn Young about how we came to be in this predicament.
Lynn Young, CEO, B.E.L.
“We’ve reached the point we were hoping we wouldn’t reach. Let’s start from the beginning. The plant, the A.E.S. plant that Mexico brought online last year in the Merida III project, it’s a four hundred and eight megawatt plant and it was supposed to have supplied Mexico with the solution to their delivering capacity in the southern part of Mexico. That plant has been having problems from start up and early last month they called us and they have to take the plant out of service to solve the problems. It’s owned by A.E.S., the American company, and that plant is now out of commission and what it did was that it put Mexico in a squeeze where they didn’t have enough capacity to meet their own peak demand. So they asked us to meet our own peak.”
“I think what has happened now is that some of the other Mexican generating plants, they have had to delay their maintenance on those and I think it has caught up with them. They have had failures now on a couple of their other generating plants. So now they’re telling us that they cannot…sometimes during the day, like today, they couldn’t give us the power that we normally get from them. So what that did is that we then had to run Mollejon for more than three hours per day, and the inflows of water, now that we’re in the dry season, is not sufficient for us to maintain Mollejon at full output for anything more than three or four hours a day. So the net result is that we didn’t have sufficient capacity in Belize to meet the peak because there is not enough water in Mollejon and the Mexicans don’t have enough capacity to supply us all day, and so we have load shed now.”
Stewart Krohn
“Today the nation’s capital was without power for virtually the entire day. Cabinet met today, and they couldn’t even call in to the place. If this goes on much longer, it’s going to have serious economic repercussions on the country. What is the prognosis for the short term future?”
Lynn Young
“It’s been a very touch and go situation in that that Merida III project, A.E.S. was supposed to have it back last week and they didn’t get it back in time. The latest we heard from them is that it should be back online tomorrow. But again, so far they haven’t met the deadlines that they’ve promised to the Mexicans.”
“We have contingency plans in place. Gentrac has on standby ten megawatts of generations that we can bring in. Fortis has on standby about seventeen megawatts of generation they can send in and we have another couple supplies of rental equipment. But the rental of this equipment is expensive and as you might appreciate, with the Mexicans telling us that A.E.S. will come back online shortly, you don’t want to go and spend half a million dollars, bring in the equipment…it will take about a week at least to have the equipment up and running, so if we knew for sure that they would not come back within a month, we would make that move, but so far all the indications from them are that it’s imminent that they will get over this problem.”
Stewat Krohn
“Mr. Young, when this problem first presented itself, you told the public through your press releases that you had a standby plan ready and you kind of gave the impression that you had these spare generators sitting on the docks in Miami just ready come down at a moment’s notice. Now it turns out a month later that you’re still singing the same tune that you’ve got this contingency plan ready for whenever you need it. If you don’t need it now, when are you going to need it?”
Lynn Young
“It’s a very difficult decision and you have to make the decision based on the best information that you have at the time. The best information we had up until last week was that the Mexican problem should have been solved by the end of last week. Over the weekend, the two problems we had over the weekend we not generation related, it was another problem we had with the transmission line, which under normal circumstances we would have had enough water in Mollejon to handle. But because of the generation problem, we have been running down the hydro storage at Mollejon. So it’s kind of because the A.E.S. plant has been out longer than A.E.S. has been saying it will be out for, it has been stretching everything to the limit.”
Stewat Krohn
“What is the message then Mr. Young that you have for the housewife who doesn’t have any water to wash or to bathe. To the student who doesn’t have any light to do homework, to the industrialist who has to shut down his factory because he doesn’t have any power, what is the message that you have for the people that are being inconvenienced?”
Lynn Young
“Well, there’s two messages really, one is that we are doing our best, we’re trying to make the best decisions under the circumstances, weighing the likelihood of the Mexicans coming back to normal or whether we spend the money to get the extra generation in. That cost is going to be passed on through eventually, so we’ve got manage it. The other message is it is I guess the public has been rather easy on us so far I must admit. We don’t expect them to continue to tolerate this much longer and that’s why we’re going to pull out all the stops to try and put and end to it. But the other message is to thank the public for their patience so far and we can only continue to try our best under the circumstances. I think the message is clear, we have to put our own generation in place in Belize, we’ve got to go through with Chalillo, we’ve got to look at the bagasse options to see if we can get that in place. The backup generation we are looking at is diesel fired and it’s expensive. If we go that road, we’ll have to raise electricity rates.”
“So all of this is part of our trying to manage the cost of power and deliver the reliable service. But at the end of the day as we are finding out, having the power is the most important thing, so if we have to bring in extra generating and diesel fired generation and gas turbines, we will have to talk to the government on an increase in rates to accommodate that.”
Among the options being considered by B.E.L. is the long term rental of twenty megawatts of portable power which would be used until the Chalillo hydro plant could be built in two or three year’s time. That project has been held up by objections from environmentalists who claim that the dam will cause unacceptable harm to the area around the upper Macal and Raspaculo Rivers. An environmental impact assessment is expected to be completed by June. Late word from B.E.L. is that Mexico was able to supply some last minute peak power and blackouts may be avoided tonight. That news came too late for Karaoke TV, however, as the show had to be canceled because of the uncertainty. The show will return to the air next Tuesday. Diehard Karaoke fans can still enjoy themselves as the Bellevue has a backup generator and Richard will still be spinning his CD’s tonight at King Street station.
