Construction to start on Vaca Hydro Plant

Construction has commenced on the Vaca Hydroelectric Facility. The eighteen megawatt run of the river plant will be located on the Macal River, two and a half miles downstream from the existing Mollejon power station. According to a release from BECOL, the sister company of Belize Electricity Limited, Vaca will deliver around eighty gigawatt hours of power annually to the national grid. This would bring the total hydro output from Vaca, Mollejon, and Chalillo to two hundred and forty gigawatt hours. The Vaca site will include a forty-five meter high dam to create a one point five million cubic metre reservoir. That water will be regulated by controlling the flow from Chalillo, as is currently done for Mollejon. The cost of Vaca is projected at one hundred and five million Belize dollars and it is scheduled to come on line in late 2009. Contractor for the project is Sino Hydro, the same mainland Chinese company that built Chalillo.