Can Belize’s Power Grid Handle the Electric Vehicle Push?

As Belize pushes to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, one major question remains: can the country’s electricity grid keep up? With residents already raising concerns about power reliability and capacity, we asked Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Public Utilities and Energy, Dr. Leroy Almendarez, whether Belize has the infrastructure needed to support widespread electric vehicle adoption. He says the shift must happen alongside significant investments in generation, storage, and grid upgrades, several of which are already in the pipeline.

 

Dr. Leroy Almendarez, CEO, Ministry of Public Utilities, Energy

“That data tells BEL how much more we may really need because now you’re talking about charging stations plus your homes. And so then it means then that we have to also – I can’t I wouldn’t say ramp up because you can’t accelerate people – I keep hearing people saying “the sun is shining,” but you can’t just take the sun and put it in your vehicle. And I don’t mean to be cynical, but it simply means you must have infrastructure in place. So luckily for us at this point in time we’re already at the request for proposal stage for eighty megawatts of solar. That should come on in the first quarter of twenty twenty-eight. There are forty megawatts of batteries, and these are all clean sources of energy. And then, of course, this year about November or so you should have fifteen megawatts from BABCOL. Now, the grid must be able to dispatch that, to distribute that, to make sure that you can, you can get access to that energy. And you don’t want competing forces either. Otherwise, we’ll end up in a serious situation. So that tells us from the data that was shown yesterday that the most challenging area at this time is in the south and when and too often we hear it’s the south.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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