BEL Pins Hopes on Solar Projects

BEL says it’s strapped for cash, and rising power costs have made its operations unstainable Aside from asking for an increase to the Cost of Power Adjustment (COPA) cap, what is the company doing to fix its finances? We asked BEL Chairman Dr. Lynn Young.

 

Dr. Lynn Young, Chairman, BEL

“We are taking steps to try to expedite some solar projects that we are looking at. So we have one coming on, we hope at the end of December. We have already received approval from the PUC for two projects and we have a  third one that we are trying to get approval for those. The solar projects will provide power for around thirteen cents Belize per kilowatt hour. But of course, solar is during the day. Our most expensive power is during the evening between six and nine o’clock. So we have to try to get batteries to go along with them to cover that little period there. So, solar will give us some respite. We did some numbers and what we are bringing on will enable us, if we get all of them on time, to discontinue the use of a lot of the diesel and to stop renting the emergency diesel generation that we have in place right now. We are right now looking at, we have these big solar projects that should eb online in 2028, battery and solar and we are tyring to see how we can expedite those. These big projects take time.”

 

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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