What are the ongoing electricity problems in San Pedro, Belize?
While the hot national news story in Belize earlier in May 2024 was the rolling power outages which affected the entire country for a period of several weeks, ongoing electricity problems are still plaguing Ambergris Caye, and its only town, San Pedro.
San Pedro is the primary tourist market in Belize, so with continuing blackouts on the island, there has been a great deal of concern among the local population, as well as many recent complaints from visitors about the ongoing electricity problems in San Pedro.
How are the current power outages in San Pedro different from those which occurred across Belize earlier?
The immediate cause of the rolling power outages which affected the entire country of Belize earlier in May stemmed from the fact that the national power company in Belize, Belize Electricity Limited (BEL), for many years, has not had sufficient in-country capacity to produce enough power to meet demand; thus, BEL has always purchased power from the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) in Mexico everyday in order to meet the demand for electricity here in Belize.
However, due to greatly increased demand and related issues on the Mexican side of the border, CFE announced early in May that they needed to curtail the amount of electricity that they could supply to Belize. This resulted in country-wide planned and unplanned load shedding, which brought rolling blackouts to most of the country during an extremely hot and dry month.
To learn how stability was brought back the national electricity grid, check out our in-depth coverage of the country-wide Power Outages in Belize here.
While some of the nationwide electricity generation issues have improved, San Pedro has what is likely an even more complex problem: the island does not have sufficient capacity to bring the power it currently needs from the mainland, where the power is generated and distributed, over to the island.
Where does San Pedro get its electricity?
At present, the electricity supplied to the grid for San Pedro is carried to the island via an undersea cable. This undersea cable runs from the Belize mainland to the island, and the cable is rated to carry 17 MW of electricity, and earlier this year, during peak tourist season, there were a number of days when the demand was greater than the cable capacity; thus, there were unplanned power outages on the island in the middle of the busy tourist season.
The national electric company, BEL, says not only has the capacity of the undersea cable been exceeded due to greatly increased demand on the island, but that the cable is also in need of maintenance, and sooner rather than later, a new submarine cable, with a larger capacity, needs to be ran from the mainland to the island.
In an article in the San Pedro Sun, BEL’s Manager of Systems Planning and Engineering, Sheena Simpson, indicated that replacing the cable will not be an easy task; Miss Simpson shared:
BEL anticipates that the load will increase from the island but that the new submarine cable will not be installed in 2024 due to the tendering and procurement process. They are looking to start work on the submarine cable in 2025.
The San Pedro Sun
The current concern on the island is that even though San Pedro is no longer experiencing peak tourist season, there are still many days when the demand for electricity on the island is at, or very close to, the capacity of the undersea cable, so emergency load shedding has been taking place in order to protect the equipment on the grid.
BEL is publishing daily updates on electricity demand for San Pedro
For the past couple of months, BEL has been publishing San Pedro Power Consumption Updates in hopes that islanders will help by turning off all unneeded electrical appliances and adjusting the temperature on their air conditioners. These updates are often published every hour during times of peak demand.
On some days, residents and visitors may have heeded the warnings and reduced demand to the grid, but there are still times when BEL needs to shut off service to parts of the island in order to protect the integrity of both the submarine cable and other equipment on the grid.
Are there any other causes of the electricity problems in San Pedro?
On May 1st, there was an extended power outage of more than 14 hours on Ambergris Caye due to the failure of a major component of a single transformer in BEL’s Maskall Substation on the mainland. Fortunately, BEL had a very large, mobile substation which they were able to move to the Maskall site to restore power to the island.
However, recently, BEL has indicated the replacement substation has had difficulty managing demand from San Pedro when the island nears the top end of the submarine cable rating, so BEL has had to introduce more rolling blackouts on the island in order to preserve the integrity of the substation equipment.
What are the plans to solve the electricity problems in San Pedro?
One of BEL’s solutions for the country-wide electricity demand problem was to upgrade a gas turbine generator in order to increase in-country capacity to produce electricity. Earlier in May, the Westlake Turbine on the Belize mainland was upgraded so that it increased its generation capacity from a total of 19 MW to 30 MW, which improved in-country power generation by 11%.
BEL has now announced that it will deploy a second gas turbine generator to Ambergris Caye, and this generator will have the capacity to produce 20 MW of electricity, which is greater than the current capacity of the submarine cable. The generator was originally scheduled to come online at the end of May 2024.
One big advantage of having the generator on Ambergris Caye is that the power will be generated on the island; thus, it will not need to pass through the submarine cable.
However, one huge drawback to the turbine generator is the amount of fuel that it requires. BEL announced that in order to run the 30 MW updated generator on the mainland at capacity, it requires 30,000 gallons of fuel per day. Thus, it is likely fair to assume that at 20 MW, the new San Pedro generator will burn something like 20,000 gallons on fuel per day to run at capacity.
I just can not imagine how BEL will store all of this fuel on Ambergris Caye, and when I think about the need to transport the fuel to the island, I have visions of a flotilla of tanker barges descending on the island.
Battery backup planned for San Pedro
As I reported in my article on the earlier nationwide Power Outages in Belize, in order to combat the current electricity problems in San Pedro, along with the new generator that was originally forecasted to come online by the end of May 2024 on Ambergris Caye, BEL has also announced that in cooperation with the Government of Belize, they are working to set up a 10-megawatt battery energy storage facility in San Pedro that is scheduled to come online in 2025 and will provide further capacity support during periods of high demand on the island.
There was some controversy on the island concerning the battery storage facility, as BEL decided to use a large swath of mangrove forest for the new facility. The Green Iguana Sanctuary had been operating on this land for a number of years, so many local residents were very disappointed to see both the clear cutting of mangrove forest, as well as the removal of most of the Iguana Sanctuary from the site.
Aside from the really shortsighted practice of clearing mangrove forests (they are nature’s best defense against erosion, hurricanes, and storm surge), in my view, if BEL is going to make the major investment in a battery storage facility, why do they not tie it in with some kind of utility grade solar project on the island?
Final thoughts on the current electricity problems in San Pedro
One can not look at the electricity problems in San Pedro without thinking about the context of what has been occurring on the island over the past few years. In my short 3.5 years of living in San Pedro prior to moving to Corozal, even though some of my time there was during the strict pandemic lockdown, the pace of clear cutting, filling mangroves, and development on the island was astounding.
I do not think it profitable to assign all of the blame for the current electricity problems in San Pedro to any single entity, but I have to wonder whether anyone, including especially politicians and major developers, gave any thought about infrastructure needs before submitting their large projects for review and then having them approved.
Someone had to approve permits to hook up all of these new buildings to the grid, right? And major developers should have had some knowledge of the kind of electricity requirements that a 25, 50, 100 or more room project would require.
My hope is that this small, rapidly developing country will have learned something from these rolling blackouts so that infrastructure needs might become part of the planning and permitting process for large new developments.
If there are any ongoing news stories you would like to see covered here, please feel free to contact me, and if you are just starting your research on Belize, take a look at our Introduction to Belize article.