Friday, May 30, 2008

BEL Works to Restore Power to San Pedro

Power outages are still plaguing the island, keeping businesses at a stand still. Word came to our office that some tourist are checking out early due to the lack of power in some hotels. Only a few resorts have their back-up generators.

Other sources inform us that BEL is using their back up generators in San Pedro to supply power to only a few sections of town. They are sharing the load of power at intervals of 4 hours to different areas of town. But as it is, most areas out side of town have not had power since 1:57am in the morning.

The island is definitely suffering from these power outages and hopefully something is done to correct the problem very soon!Below is an official press release from the power company explaining the situation:

Press Release - Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) advises that it is working to fully restore power supply to San Pedro Town, Ambergris Caye following a trip on the system earlier this morning. At 1:57 a.m., power supply was lost to the town following a trip on the system. It was identified that the outage was due to a ground fault between the Maskall Substation and the riser on the submarine cable which feeds power supply to the island. The exact fault is being investigated by work crews, who have been dispatched to the area.

Using the standby generator on San Pedro, power supply was restored by 6:37 a.m. to Feeder 1 and Feeder 2 which includes the central portion of the town. The Northern and

Southern end of San Pedro Town remain without power. Power supply to these remaining areas should be restored by 9:30 a.m. BEL also reports that crews are working to resolve technical difficulties on the distribution systems in other regions of the country. Some villages along the Northern, Hummingbird and Southern Highways and a portion of North Side Belize City have been experiencing intermittent power outages between last night and this morning due to faults on those systems.

BEL regrets any inconvenience caused by these outages and assures customers that the

Company is working to restore power supply to all affected areas as soon as possible.

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