BEL Explains San Pedro Power Outage

San Pedro Town was plunged into darkness on Sunday night after a transformer belonging to the Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) malfunctioned near Ramon’s Village Resort sometime after 6:00 p.m. 

Residents say they heard what sounded like an explosion. 

In an official statement, BEL later confirmed that the outage was caused by a hardware fault on the overhead portion of the 34.5 kV sub-transmission line that supplies power to the island. According to BEL, this line connects San Pedro to the national grid through a combination of submarine, underground, and overhead infrastructure.

Complicating the situation, BEL’s San Pedro Gas Turbine, which typically serves as a backup, could not be activated because it relies on the same damaged transmission line. The company also cited bad weather as a factor that delayed restoration efforts.

Power was later restored.