Special Committee Races to Solve Belize’s Energy Crisis

The Special Electricity Committee (SEC) established by Prime Minister John Briceno is meeting again this week as it works under a strict deadline to deliver recommendations to the government. The Committee was formed after the prime minister called a high-level meeting on June 20 to address the energy crisis that the country is facing. The SEC has been given only a few months to develop a National Electrical Energy Mix Master Plan to secure Belize’s energy future with reliable, affordable, and sustainable electricity. The SEC has representation from the Public Utilities Commission, Belize Electricity Limited, the private sector and is chaired by Dr. Leroy Almendarez, CEO in the Ministry of Public Utilities, Energy, and Logistics. Today, Dr. Almendarez spoke with Love News on the work it will take to develop the Energy Mix Master Plan.

Dr. Leroy Almendarez, Chief Executive Officer at the Ministry of Public Utilities, Energy and Logistics: “This committee was established and a part of this committee is to look at renewables especially. When talking about renewables, we’re talking about things like solar and wind and hydro. BECOL produces hydro. Wind we have found out through some feasibility studies that onshore that wind does not have the consistent velocity in order to generate but of course this is still something in progress. Biomass, you know by Santander and BSI but that still cannot provide or supply to meet all the man that’s required. And so part of this is one to look at what’s this mix? Because we are supposed to come up with a master plan proposal for the prime minister in 90 days with an inception report in 30 days. So we have to look at, okay, if you’re going to expand, because remember apart from the expansion in terms of generation you have to look at the national grid and to see what it can take and with new generation sources what would need to be done? So there’s also a good study analysis to look at the sustainability of the national grid, the reliability, the resilience of the national grid. And so coming back to the least cost expansion, okay, so we want to expand to generate more electricity, but generate more electricity that will actually reduce the costs to consumers, not increase the costs.”

According to Dr. Almendarez, the master plan must take into consideration factors such as the country’s international commitments to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. He said that a major focus of the committee’s current recommendations is the use of solar energy and battery storage systems. 

Dr. Leroy Almendarez, Chief Executive Officer at the Ministry of Public Utilities, Energy and Logistics:“At this point in time the primary source that we’re looking at is solar. I think you recently heard about the BABCOL solar that was signed for 15 megawatts. That’s an addition but it also provides a testing ground to see how it works because the thing you must understand with solar, solar is generated when the sun is actually shining. If there’s cloud cover, that creates an issue. And so it can create instability with the grid. So matching that, in that case they have some battery and battery to store energy. And basically what it does is smooths it over in the event of a cloud cover or instability. So we’re also looking in our situation here at battery energy storage systems and the purpose of these systems, of course, about 20 megawatts in some cases the whole purpose of this is to create that instability that may come, that provides the kind of stability that is necessary. So you ask about blackouts. In the event that that was to occur, these batteries can actually cause a quicker, what we call block starting rather than using diesel generators which is the most expensive sources of electricity. So that’s what we’re looking at. So very futuristically. So we’re looking at two years, five years, and ten years.”

The committee is set to meet tomorrow, July 23, to refine recommendations for the inception report