B.E.L. dedicates new building
Belize Electricity Limited today inaugurated a new dispatch center which the company says will improve the way it distributes energy to consumers countrywide. The new facility, located at mile two and a half on the Northern Highway, will be the hub of B.E.L.’s power supply system. It houses a high-tech computer system that will incorporate the nation’s energy supply into one grid and make it easier to correct voltage fluctuation and virtually eliminate blackouts. Project Coordinator, Derek Davis says the long run impact of such a system will be the reduction in electricity rates as the company lowers the overall cost of energy generation.
Derek Davis, Project Coordinator, Power II
“The major impact is that it will allow B.E.L. to control the supply of power to all its customers, control the grid. That is, ensure that there is good quality supply to all its customers. It would allow for fast restoration of the system should there be a problem. And it will also allow us to do economic dispatch to ensure that we are getting the best prices using the cheapest power at any one time to supply the grid and to supply our customers.
The backbone of the system is now a 115 K.V. grid which, except for Independence, Punta Gorda and Caye Caulker, everything else will be connected to that one grid system and in effect as the Prime Minister mentioned earlier we could be getting supply from Mexico from a diesel generator, from hydroid. It’s all one mix and it’s all controlled by the load dispatchers who decide which one to use to make sure that it gets the overall optimum price of supply.
We will be able to open and close switches throughout the country. Anything on the grid that has been standardized, that is all its sub-stations. In other words, for example, a feeder in Corozal, by the touch of a button we will be able to open and close it back.”
The cost of the project, including the Supervisory and Data Acquisition System, is estimated at a little over a million dollars, with funding from B.E.L. and the European Investment Bank. Davis says ninety five percent of the system has been installed and the center will be fully operational in the next two weeks.
