Major Assessment Planned for Belize Electricity Grid

A major assessment will be done of Belize’s electricity grid based on the recommendations from the Special Electricity Committee (SEC) established by the Prime Minister. The SEC recently delivered the short-term deliverables, National Electrical Energy Mix Master Plan, to Prime Minister John Briceno, which gave recommendations for actions within the next two years. These recommendations are aimed at addressing high-priority issues within the energy sector, to ensure sustainability. Speaking on the recommendations, Prime Minister John Briceno told Love News that the assessment of the grid is paramount to determine its capability to add more energy.

John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “We’ve been working to the MCC and part of it was energy of the MCC and part of it. And we got the IFC to be able to come on board to do start a study for the long-term needs of Belize. But whilst that study is being done that would not be ready until I think the middle of, I think 2026/2027. We need electricity now. So we set up a small special electricity committee that have from the private sector, incudes the Ministry of Finance,  Ministry of Energy,  PUC, BEL, to come together and come up with some plans quickly. And one of the things that they did is that  we had already asked PUC,  asked for bids or for interest for 80 megawatts of solar. Several companies have put in their interest and now we have a committee that is looking into it  to try to narrow it into four groups of 20 megawatts.  At the same time, if we have not done, we are about to get a  company out of Honduras to do a study of the grid to see where we have to improve the grid. The grid as it is, remember that was set up several many years ago and we need to modernize it, need to upgrade. So there’s a lot of work that we have to do.  But we can’t wait until things done fall down. We have to do it right now.” 

When the SEC was established in July, the committee was given 90 days to develop short, medium, and long-term recommendations for the energy sector. Chair of the Committee, CEO in the Ministry of Energy, Dr. Leroy Almendarez, recently told Love News that the SEC is on track to meet its deadline.