BELIZE CITY, Wed. Feb. 9, 2022– On Monday night, at about 6:30, a nationwide power outage plunged the country into darkness for a little over an hour. Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) has since reported that it was a disruption in the operations of Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE)— a Mexican company from which Belize purchases part of its power supply—that caused the outage reportedly across all districts.

A release from BEL states, “An unexpected interruption in supply from Independent Power Producer (IPP), Mexico’s Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) at Xulha, resulted in a power outage that affected all areas of the country.”

A power outage was also reported in Chetumal around the same time, according to our sources.

By 7:58 p.m., power had been restored almost countrywide, according to the BEL release. The company’s team reportedly discovered not long after the shutdown in power supply that the outage was caused by a malfunction at the Mexican provider and promptly moved to use local energy sources to commence a phased restoration—starting in the Stann Creek District, and then Cayo, before restoring power to the remainder of the country.

“Belize Electricity Limited utilized local and renewable energy sources to restore the national grid commencing within 20 minutes in the Stann Creek and Toledo Districts using BAPCOL, followed by hydro from BECOL to initiate restoration to the Cayo District. Power supply was restored to the remainder of the country by 8:10 with the support from CFE, which came back online during the gradual restoration that was necessary to ensure that safe and steady return of power supply to customers,” the release from the company stated.