There’s good news on the horizon for Belizeans; lower electricity bills could be coming soon! That’s thanks to a major leap toward energy independence: Belize’s first utility-scale solar power plant is officially in the works, which will provide Belize with fifteen megawatts of power. For years, we’ve relied heavily on imported energy, about half of our power comes from Mexico. But when an energy crisis hit there, Belize felt the shock, with temporary power cuts that exposed just how vulnerable our grid really is. Now, with this new solar plant set to boost local energy production, there’s real hope that prices will drop and reliability will rise. BEL Chairman Andrew Marshalleck has more on what this means for your wallet, and the country’s future.
Andrew Marshalleck, Chairman, Belize Electricity Limited
“It should be lower, and this is why solar is needed, because it’ll exert a downward pressure on the average cost of power.”
Reporter
“You already to the price?”
Andrew Marshalleck
“Yes.”
Reporter
“Tell us.”
Andrew Marshalleck
“Yes. But it’s a unit price and you don’t know how much will be produced. And you will have better data once it starts functioning to make better projections. But projections have been made well, it’s not that I can tell you what it’ll be down to the cents but it’ll be lower than a number of sources that we rely on now, so that when you average it together with those sources, it brings down the overall average cost of power. And this is why we say we need to introduce utility scale solar into the system if we want to maintain prices as where they are, because it has a downward pressure on overall costs.”