Press release, September 27, 2025 – Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) updates the public on a major power outage that affected several parts of the country on Friday, September 26, 2025.
At 1:52 p.m. on Friday afternoon, BEL experienced a sudden loss of supply from one of its major suppliers, Mexico’s Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), following a major system collapse in the Yucatan Peninsula. At the time of the supply loss, CFE was carrying 46% of the total system load with the remaining load being supplied by BEL’s Westlake Gas Turbine and the Fortis Belize and Hydro Maya hydroelectric plants. BEL’s grid protection system activated immediately to restore the system balance by shedding load in various parts of the national grid. This resulted in outages in service areas countrywide except for Belmopan, Ladyville, and parts of San Ignacio and rural Belize District.
Restoration of power to the entire Belize City occurred within an hour.
BEL’s San Pedro Gas Turbine (GT) was brought online immediately after the CFE supply was lost. Both the San Pedro Gas Turbine and the Westlake Gas Turbine operated at full capacity continuously until the system was finally normalized.
Yesterday’s energy demand during the afternoon through to midnight exceeded overall local generation capacity by as much as 17%. To manage the impact of the resulting supply shortage, our team implemented rotational load shedding until the supply from CFE was restored at 11:30 p.m.
The current in-country supply shortage is a result of a combination of seasonal and maintenance factors: bagasse-based generation is unavailable during the sugar off-season; one unit at the Mollejon hydro dam is out-of-service for maintenance until mid-October; and one unit at BAPCOL is out of service indefinitely while the remaining two BAPCOL units are unable to generate at full capacity.
For this reason, we continue to work closely with our partners and stakeholders to strengthen Belize’s local generation capacity. While our Gas Turbines have helped to address immediate needs, the long-term solution must necessarily include utility-scale solar, distributed generation, battery storage, natural gas, and initiatives to promote demand-side management.
We extend our sincere thanks to all our employees for their dedication, especially our System Control team, Gas Turbine operators, and all supporting staff who worked tirelessly during the event.
We also thank our Customers for your patience and understanding as we remain committed to providing safe, reliable, and sustainable energy solutions to you.
We will continue to provide timely updates on our BEL 24-7 app. For more information, call us toll-free 0-800-BEL-CARE or 0800-235-2273.
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