BEL CEO, John Mencias
by William Ysaguirre (Freelance Writer)
BELIZE CITY, Thurs. May 8, 2025
The entire country was plunged into darkness by an unexpected power outage around 11:45 p.m. on Monday, and while Belize Electricity Ltd. was able to restore power an hour later on Tuesday morning, the unplanned interruption of energy supply has prompted one industrial user to publicly highlight the adverse effects of the outage, while other commercial customers suffered in silence.
BEL subsequently explained that the outage was caused by the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) in Mexico cutting supply to Belize, because of an emergency within their supply network in Yucatan. With Belize not fully self-sufficient in energy generation, BEL buys cheap power when it can during off-peak hours. The unexpected interruption of CFE power obliged BEL to start up generators within Belize to restore power.
Bowen & Bowen Ltd. has issued a disclaimer advising its customers that, should they have trouble finding Belikin Beer in the traditional bottle in stores, it is because ”recent unexpected power outages, including a major disruption on May 5th,” have affected their production facilities. The company statement says that “despite having backup generators in place, the abrupt nature of these outages has caused significant stress to our control systems and incoming power infrastructure, resulting in equipment failures. We are thankful that the country is not facing more widespread power failures. However, our systems are unable to respond to the severity and suddenness of the recent outages, leading to operational challenges.”
The brewers explained that the main impact was to their bottling line for Belikin Beer and Stout, which will temporarily disrupt the availability of these products in the glass bottles; but not in cans, as the brewers would step up production in the cans to make up for the shortfall, until the bottling plant can be repaired.
This is precisely the sort of scenario that BEL had been preparing for when the company increased its in-country generating capacity by 33 percent in 2024, as BEL Chief Executive Officer John Mencias announced last November. The company anticipated that peak demand would grow by about 6 percent to 137 megawatts this month, while the in-country supply was only about 127 – 131 megawatts last year. BEL had increased domestic power supply by 25 megawatts with upgrades to the Westlake gas turbine last May, and a mobile gas turbine was brought online in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye in November. The company had also applied to the Public Utilities Commission for a license to buy emergency power, in an effort to increase domestic power generation over the next 5 years, with the aim of creating a 28 percent excess of generating capacity within Belize as a contingency mechanism.
Mencias said it was not so much a question of energy self-sufficiency, but a question of energy security and reliability. Part of the company’s plan is for Belize to go green, with 75 percent of energy coming from renewable sources by 2030. BEL can often buy cheap power from outside Belize for much less than what it costs when purchased from Belizean power producers—as low as 20 cents/kWh in off-peak hours; and the company announced plans to buy storage batteries to store enough energy to supply 40 megawatts for 8 hours for San Pedro, Orange Walk, Ladyville and Dangriga, and another 20 megawatts of battery storage capacity to supply 8 hours of power for the Belize District.