BEL Explains San Pedro Power Outage
On Sunday night, San Pedro Town experienced a sudden power outage after a Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) transformer malfunctioned near Ramon’s Village Resort shortly after 6:00 p.m. Residents reported hearing an explosion.
BEL issued an official statement confirming that the blackout resulted from a hardware fault on the overhead section of the 34.5 kV sub-transmission line supplying electricity to the island. This line connects San Pedro to the national grid through a mix of submarine, underground, and overhead systems.
Complicating repairs, BEL’s San Pedro Gas Turbine backup could not be activated since it depends on the same damaged transmission line. Additionally, adverse weather conditions slowed down restoration efforts.
"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."
"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."
Summary
The power outage in San Pedro was due to a hardware failure on a critical transmission line, with backup systems disabled by the same fault and weather delays hampering repairs.