BEL will buy power from sugar company
It didn’t make any headlines, but on Friday two of Belize’s corporate giants signed a deal which may ensure the future of Belize’s biggest agricultural activity and at the same time reduce electricity bills across the nation. The memorandum of intent signed by Belize Electricity Limited and Belize Sugar Industries calls for BSI to construct an electrical generating facility at Tower Hill fueled by bagasse, the fibrous waste product of sugar cane. BSI would then sell much of that power to BEL. News Five’s Stewart Krohn spoke to BEL’s Lynn Young to find out more.
Lynn Young, CEO, Belize Electricity Limited
“For some time we have been investigating whether we could do a co-generation project with BSI. They have a lot of waste from the sugar cane, when you grind it, the bagasse. Right now they have to incinerate that bagasse, they burn it in the open air and with all the stuff that’s there. They have environmental problems with it and it’s costing them to get rid of it. So one of the things that we are looking at is for them to burn it in the furnace to produce electricity. They can produce more electricity than their plant can use. I think the amount of bagasse that they have, they estimate they can do twenty, maybe twenty-five megawatts of electricity and they don’t need all of that, so they can sell the fifteen megawatts extra capacity to us.
Stewart Krohn
“They may be people out there thinking that because you’re going to do this arrangement with BSI to purchase power from them, that it means the proposal to build a new facility at Chalillo will be scrapped. What’s the position regarding Chalillo?”
Lynn Young
“It obvious to every body now that a mix of generation options is very important for stability, for reliability. Mexico will always be there, but we don’t have much control over the Mexican prices. It’s every attractive right now, it’s very reliable, but we need to make sure that we have internal sources and we are looking at the future as we continue to grow.”
“The BSI project we expect, will be online maybe in the next three years, similarly the Chalillo project. That’s about when we need to be adding more generation to our system. I don’t understand what’s the big deal about Chalillo. I noticed last week an article saying that Chalillo is going to destroy tourism in Belize. I really don’t see, by any stretch of imagination how that could be. I have seen a lot of hydro facilities similar to what we are doing and instead of destroy tourism, it enhances tourism.”
“It so happens that the environmentalist are concerned about Chalillo’s effect on the wildlife and in particular the scarlet macaw I think it is and our studies suggest that it’s not going to be nothing near what they are saying that the area that we are going to be flooding is just a small part of the habitat. The animal is not going to be destroyed or anything like that, but we are doing a more comprehensive wildlife study of a much larger area to solidify our grounds and to make our case stronger.”
Stewart Krohn
“When can the consumer expect lower rates as a result of this deal.”
Lynn Young
“We are committed to dropping rates. We’ve made the commitment to drop rates ever year by an average of one cent for the next five years. We’ve done the first one earlier this year and there’s another one coming next year and it will continue right through, I think, until 2003, 2004”
While precise details have not yet been worked out, it appears that a general range of prices has been agreed to. No decision has been reached as to whether BSI will build a stand-alone generating plant or reconfigure its sugar factory to take advantage of the co-generation project. Young said that hydropower and the bagasse project fit together well because while hydro is weakest during the dry season, that is when sugar operations are running full steam.
