Belize Delegation Visits Belgium to Study Energy Storage

Belize is advancing its clean energy goals as senior representatives from the Ministries of Finance, Public Utilities, and Energy return from a high-level training in Belgium centered on cutting-edge energy storage technologies. The five-day program, hosted by the World Bank and its Energy Storage Partnership, brought together global experts to explore battery technologies, grid flexibility, and renewable integration. These are critical steps toward a more resilient and sustainable power sector. Dr. Leroy Almendarez, Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Public Utilities, Energy and Logistics, tells us it was important to attend the training and witness best practices because energy storage is crucial to Belize’s energy transition strategy and cost savings.

 

Dr. Leroy Almendarez, C.E.O. Ministry of Public Utilities and Energy

“This is a location in Brussels that deals with clean energy and you hear so much about climate change and renewables, et cetera. And so it’s good to dialogue with others, to find out sometimes what were your growing pains? What were some of the costs of trying to get into business? Because you don’t want to reinvent the wheel from those who were there.  To understand the technicalities of it, what’s the process? Since we import so much power from Mexico, there are times around one A.M. and two A.M. in the morning when the power is much cheaper. If we have this battery energy storage system, and you notice I’m saying it’s a whole system, then you can actually buy the cheap power, store it in the batteries. And when it’s stored in the batteries, when BEL then distributes this power, remember it was low, it was low energy or low power at low cost at that time. Then when it’s consumed or BEL dispatches it, cause BEL dispatches power. Okay, then it simply means, remember it was at a low cost. So it could take my light bill down at peak times when you distribute that. But of course with solar, you know like I said, if you don’t store it then it becomes an issue because it simply means that what was generated, if it’s not stored, whatever was generated it’s just wasted.”