As extremely hot weather affects much of the country, many Mexicans were left without electricity on Tuesday afternoon and night.
Power outages were reported in 21 states, while the National Energy Control Center (Cenace) declared a state of emergency in Mexico’s electricity system on two occasions.
Así el apagón en San Luis Potosí #SLP pic.twitter.com/frWsO1quFO
— Frankie 🇲🇽 (@frankiefran) May 8, 2024
Cenace said in a statement on Tuesday night that Mexico’s electricity generation capacity was affected from 4:05 p.m. Mexico City time when a power plant in Tamaulipas “went out of service.”
Several other power plants in various parts of the country subsequently went offline and solar and wind power generation dropped, Cenace said.
Mexico’s energy control center didn’t say that the mass power outage was related to increased electricity demand generated by the current heat wave.
In fact, it didn’t specify a reason for the interruptions at the power plants but did say that solar generation decreased due to cloudy conditions in the Bajío region.
However, energy expert Arturo Carranza noted that increased electricity demand due to high temperatures in some parts of Mexico “causes stress” to the national system.
“To achieve conditions of reliability and safety in operations, Cenace declares these states of emergencies, which are accompanied by other actions [including programmed outages] to reduce the stress,” he said.
An “operational state of emergency in the interconnected national system” was declared at 5:04 p.m. Mexico City and lasted 48 minutes. The system needs electricity reserves of at least 6% to operate normally, but they had dropped below 3% when the emergency was declared.
A second state of emergency was declared at 7:10 p.m due to an increase in “night demand” for electricity as well as generation problems at several power plants.
Cenace said that rolling blackouts were required to “maintain safety and reliability” in the electricity system after each of the emergency declarations.
“At 20:10 the reconnection of affected electricity supply began,” Cenace said, adding that it was expected to conclude at 11 p.m.
Blackouts were reported in Mexico City, México state, Morelos, Campeche, Coahuila, Colima, Oaxaca, Puebla, Hidalgo, Chiapas, Jalisco, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Tabasco.
Neither Cenace nor the Federal Electricity Commission specified the number of people who lost power on Tuesday.
Among the municipalities affected by power outages were San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato, Toluca in México state, Reynosa in Tamaulipas and San Luis Potosí, the capital of the state of the same name.
Much of Mexico will continue to swelter on Wednesday. The National Meteorological Service is forecasting temperatures above 45 C in 11 states and temperatures of 40-45 C in an additional 11.
With reports from Reforma, El Financiero, N+ and El Economista
This is only mismanagement. Standard generation policy is that you maintain enough “spinning reserves” to cover the output of your largest operating generation unit. This is capacity that is immediately available. They apparently didn’t have that, so the other generating units online overloaded and tripped off.
At 4pm solar generation is already decreasing considerably so cloud cover should not have been that much of a factor as additional base load generation should have been in place already.
To sum it up, I call BS!
Democratic socialism at its best… stay tuned for more.
Autocratic communism–and very poor education systems.
Yes, this is all part of the plan. We knew this was coming and it’s going to get much worse.
Of course, there has been some mismanagement, but it was only two years ago that the Texas independent grid had a major failure. Similarly, in the early 2000s, Californians had to deal with rolling blackouts, and we all scrambled to change our zones to be exempt. It’s worth considering how the transition of Spanish-owned (Ilerdrole) power plants to complete Mexican control played a role in the current situation. Infrastructure often doesn’t receive the attention it needs until something goes wrong, and this is most likely years in the making.
Just about every country has problems when temps are 35-45 throughout most of the country.
Mexico will have more than others, sure, but it’s not like the US has new infrastructure, theirs is as old as anyone’s.
Go nuclear
And Claudia wants to invest in more solar and wind? How stupido.
We just installed three air conditioners and solar panels a month ago since we had expected hot summer this year.
CFE has not give us permission to run the solar panel until ?
There must have been the same situation with idle solar panels waiting for the permits from CFE.
Where have been cloudy days so strong sun .
The solar panels are sitting in idle.
They can generate enough energy to run the air conditioning system without using CFE.
Monopoly Monopoly.
Well, this just seems to be a watered down repeat of what was released a few days ago. Except, this time, it doesn’t seem to be CFE’s fault.
In San Miguel de Allende, with its flood of “Magic City” federal promotion, increased tourism and residential building in the nuevo expat suburbs, the demand is for air-conditioning in restaurants, stores and homes is forcing changes— to make this town just like it is back home North above the Rio Bravo.
I beg to differ! Without air conditioning, I will begin to seriously wilt in these very hot days. If one owns a building with a flat roof, my take is that there is a responsibility to put on solar panels, and produce as much, or more, than one uses. Ours, installed 6 years ago repayed us back in 5 years. Yours will do so in 3.
CFE will play games, they always have, they always will. It is an obstacle, not a barrier.
Half of the community just outside SMA has been off-grid for a while (it takes years for services to arrive in new communities or developments, if ever); we are semi-off-grid. I have batteries for internet and security, but I need to upgrade for whole-house, mainly for water pumps (I have three: one for the cistern, one for the water purifications system, and one for the septic system). The latter will require a transfer switch to complete a solar power generation system or one that uses LPG or gas. Regarding CFE, or power availability here, I am glad I have propane (LP gas) for cooking and water heating. I may even end up using LP gas for backup power (Ecoflow has a dual-fuel smart generator that can run off of LPG). I can see this happening in more and more places, including the U.S. If any country is trying to reduce the use of fossil fuels or get off of them entirely, reliable electricity generation and power distribution is an essential prerequisite.
Protecting ourselves from this insanity is becoming increasingly expensive and challenging.
Electricity is a natural monopoly regardless of which side of the border you’re on. I don’t know of anyplace where you have a choice of which company to buy your electricity from. And increasing production takes time. Once you convince your regulators that you need to build more capacity, it takes a while to build it. Power companies need to be pressured to foresee the future effects of climate change and build capacity.
It all depends where you live. If you leave in Sonoma Country, California, you can get 100% of your electricity from The Geysers Geothermal Power Plant. PG&E and the California Public Utilites Commission give consumers that choice.
Mexico is actually ranked number seven in geothermal energy potential. It just needs to be developed and that may depend on leadership and priorities. Same for solar and wind. Mexico has great potential, especially for solar, yet the current president is hostile towards solar. Someday, perhaps, CFE, will give us that choice, and they should. But, I won’t hold my breath.