B.E.L. turns off the light and says to light a candle
curtis eck
The only way you would not have known that there was a power outage on Thursday night was if you were in the deep jungle. That’s because the outage was nationwide and happened just as television viewers were about to tune in to the evening news. But according to the Belize Electricity Limited, it was no fault of theirs. But that was not the last of the inconvenience we’ll face for this week. That’s because BEL plans to do upgrading over the weekend and this can only mean more power outages in some areas. And brace up because the heat will last for a while.
Curtis Eck, Vice Pres., Customer Care/Operations, BEL
“The main supplier from Mexico actually tripped and that resulted in the entire system collapse. At that time we had generation from our four different hydro resources in west of Belize as well as Hydro Maya down south. However, once we have the system fail from Mexico, the entire system collapse.”
Marion Ali
“Did they explain what caused that trip to happen?”
Curtis Eck
“Yes, they have two main lines providing power to the main substation in Mexico. That then supplies power to Chetumal as well as Belize City. They had failure on one of those lines and immediately they would isolate Belize City to try restore system to Chetumal.”
Marion Ali
“It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Is it something that can happen again anytime soon?”
Curtis Eck
“Yes, well once they have problems on their transmission network, they will isolate Belize first. This is very, very rare. When you look at the power supply from Mexico it is like ninety-nine point nine percent effective basically.”
Marion Ali
“Okay, on Sunday there will be another?”
Curtis Eck
“On Sunday we have an outage planned—this is a planned outage; last night it wasn’t planned—from six in the morning until twelve midday and that will affect the Belize City as well as the Ladyville area as well as all the way up the Northern Highway to Crooked Tree, the old northern highway to Maskall as well as the Belize River Valley area; this is like Bermudian Landing and Boom and those areas.”
As Curtis Eck mentioned, the outage will take place from six to twelve and will only affect Belize City, Ladyville and the Belize River Valley area.
Perhaps BEL should design its system so that it’s not all dependent on Mexican power (which we’re not supposed to need anymore since Chalillo, right?). The system should be redundant so that when one part goes, the whole system doesn’t go.
When BEL needs to do “upgrading” and “maintenance” it has to shut down whole sections of the country. How come this doesn’t happen in Mexico, the US, Guatemala and Honduras? Maybe somebody should investigate how BEL hasn’t spent the money to properly design its system – perhaps just another example of how we’ve been screwed by BEL?
So much for the Challio lies then – “Not dependent on Mexico” & “Cheaper electricity rates” were good ones, weren’t they? We suffer, BEL & Fortis laugh all the way to the (Offshore) banks at our expense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!