B.E.L. has to Expand Capacity to Meet Energy Demands

Andrew Marshalleck

Marshalleck also told reporters that B.E.L. is procuring portable generators to address the issue in the immediate short term, but that the company is looking to build several generation facilities in the coming months.  B.E.L. is also pushing for the construction of a pair of solar farms.

Andrew Marshalleck, Chairman, Belize Electricity Ltd.

“BEL is confident that we will manage through the current situation, there might be one or two outages but there’s no serious threat to any prolonged outages at this time.  But given the way we see things going, the way we project growth in consumer demand there will soon come a time when we’re not able to so manage. In the short term, to shore up things, BEL will be looking to procure some portable generators to shore up power generation in areas of high demand and in other strategic locations.  And in the longer term, within the next twelve to fifteen months, we’ll be looking to provoke the construction of generation facilities that are currently in the pipeline but have seem to become stuck in there for one reason or another and are taking too long to come out the other end.  So we need to provoke those constructions.  Specifically, we’re talking about two solar farms by BAPCO, one in Chan Chen and one in Maskall.  It had been on the table for very many years and it needed to happen yesterday, and two, the construction of a rice generating plant in southern Belize.  That’s a reciprocating internal combustion engine and that’s been on the table for many years too and just can’t seem to come out the other end.  With regard to the latter plant, we have made contact with NGC, the National Gas Company, who had made a bid on the last occasion the rice plant went out, for request for proposal.  We will inquire if they are still able to deliver on a plant within the next twelve months.”