An industrial plant in Mexico already carries an energy job whether or not anyone has been hired to do it. A site drawing 45 GWh of electricity a year has to file its energy data with CONUEE every year between 1 March and 30 June. Any load center connected in medium tension has been subject to the Código de Red power factor and harmonic limits since 9 April 2019. On GDMTH, part of the bill is charged on measured demand in kW, so the shape of the load costs money independently of the kWh.

Operations, maintenance and HSE carry that work today, on top of production. Mexico Energy Partners is launching Virtual Energy Manager, VEM, a subscription that supplies the energy function for a fixed monthly fee instead of a salary line.

The decision this article helps a plant director or CFO evaluate is a straight comparison. What the subscription delivers each month, what it leaves with your own staff, and what percentage of your current electricity bill it has to find before it pays for itself. The arithmetic for that last test is set out below.

What the subscription covers

VEM bundles five components into one monthly engagement.

• Bill review, tariff checking and monthly performance reporting. The subscription includes the scope of bill and tariff review and of Planta en Control. That means technical and financial review of every CFE bill, continuous monitoring of consumption and performance, and a monthly report carrying a ranked pipeline of efficiency projects.
• Business cases for capital projects. Air compressors, air conditioning and refrigeration, lighting, variable speed drives and heat recovery. Each case states the internal rate of return, the payback period and a sensitivity run on the variables that actually move the answer, which are tariff escalation, running hours and equipment degradation. Mexico Energy Partners tests each case against the hurdle rate your own finance team sets, not against a rate we choose.
• Supplier and contractor evaluation on your side of the table. Mexico Energy Partners sells no equipment and takes no vendor commission. That is the reason a proposal review from us has no stake in which supplier wins. We help draft the request for proposals, score the responses and join the technical meetings.
• Verification of a PPA, a solar system or a battery you already own. Generation against the contracted estimate, availability against the guarantee in the contract, and the supplier's invoice against the settlement terms.
• Scope 2 emissions reporting for headquarters, customers and lenders. Electricity related emissions calculated on a named factor and a named standard, with the basis shown rather than assumed.

What the subscription does not cover

Mexico Energy Partners works remotely under VEM. Execution stays with your maintenance team and its contractors. There is no resident engineer, and a subscription measured in specialist hours per month is not the same as a person on the floor every day. The hours delivered are set in the scope for each portfolio, and they are the thing to check before signing.

Mexico Energy Partners does not publish a standard fee for the service, because the fee moves with site count, meter count and how many of the five components apply. Ask for it in writing before you compare anything.

The obligations that already sit on a Mexican plant

Three of them are dated and specific, and none of them wait for a hiring decision.

CONUEE treats a user drawing 45 GWh of electricity a year, or consuming the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of crude oil in fuels, as a Usuario de Patrón de Alto Consumo. The criteria and the reporting duty were published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 15 November 2018. Reporting runs from 1 March to 30 June each year and covers production, imports, exports, consumption and the conservation measures taken.

The Código de Red, issued by CRE as RES/151/2016 and published in the DOF on 8 April 2016, applies to load centers connected in medium and high tension. Medium tension sites carry power factor, current harmonic distortion, flicker and current imbalance requirements on top of the voltage, frequency, short circuit, protection and control items. CRE's own guide to the requirements sets 9 April 2019 as the compliance date for connections that already existed.

On the tariff side, CRE Acuerdo A/158/2024, published in the DOF on 24 January 2025, sets the final basic supply tariffs. GDMTH applies at or above 100 kW per month in medium voltage and bills capacity and distribution on measured kW, with energy priced differently in base, intermediate and peak hours. A plant that cuts kWh without moving its peak keeps paying the same demand charge.

How to test a subscription against a hire

Run three lines. First, your annual electricity spend across all sites, taken from twelve months of CFE bills. Second, the annual VEM fee quoted for that same site list. Third, the fee divided by the spend, expressed as a percentage.

That percentage is the saving the service has to find before it costs you anything. If your annual electricity spend is large enough that the quoted fee lands at a fraction of one percent of the bill, the subscription is being asked to clear a low bar. If it lands in the mid single digits, it is being asked to clear a high one, and a single site audit is probably the better purchase.

Compare that to a hire on the same basis. The loaded annual cost of a corporate energy manager, meaning salary plus benefits plus social security plus the tools and travel the role needs, divided by the same electricity spend. Mexico Energy Partners does not publish salary benchmarks, so use your own HR figure for the grade you would actually recruit at. The comparison only means something with real numbers on both sides.

One worked example exists in print. A three property hotel group in Quintana Roo made this choice and bought the subscription, and the two year result and its methodology are published with the limits of the measurement stated.

Scope 2 reporting depends on the factor you use

Two plants burning identical kWh can report different Scope 2 emissions, because the number is the product of consumption and an emission factor. SEMARNAT published the Factor de Emisión del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional for 2024 at 0.444 tCO2e per MWh in an aviso dated 28 February 2025. The 2023 factor was 0.438 tCO2e per MWh.

The standard matters as much as the factor. The GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance, published in 2015, requires a location based figure and, where contractual instruments exist, a market based figure alongside it. A report that gives one number without saying which method produced it and which factor year was applied will not survive a lender's diligence question. VEM reports name both.

Checking a PPA or a solar system you already own

Verification is contract specific. What gets checked is the generation estimate in the contract against metered output, the availability guarantee against recorded downtime, the performance ratio if the contract sets one, and the supplier's invoice against the settlement mechanism written into the agreement. Where the contract contains none of those terms, there is nothing to verify, and that finding is itself worth having.

If a new onsite system is under discussion, size it against the regulatory line before sizing it against a vendor quote. The Ley del Sector Eléctrico, published in the DOF on 18 March 2025, raised the capacity below which distributed generation needs no generation permit from 0.5 MW to 0.7 MW. Crossing that line changes the permitting route, the cost and the timeline.

Who this is not for

A single site with a modest bill and no capital program does not need a monthly subscription. It needs one audit and a tariff check. A group that already employs a corporate energy manager does not need a second one, though it may want the bill review component alone.

VEM fits an industrial group running several plants, or one large plant with a capital pipeline and reporting obligations to a parent company, a customer or a lender. If you cannot name the report the service has to produce and the audience it goes to, you are not ready to buy it.

Find out whether a subscription beats a hire

Request a Virtual Energy Manager scope and fee. Send your site list, twelve months of CFE bills, the tariff class shown on each service, and any PPA or solar contract already in place.

Mexico Energy Partners will return a scope naming which of the five components apply to your portfolio, the monthly fee, and the saving required to cover that fee stated as a percentage of your current bill. Nothing in that response is a promise of savings, of a tariff change or of eligibility for any program. If the numbers point to a hire rather than a subscription, the response will say so.

Sources

• Diario Oficial de la Federación, disposiciones administrativas setting the criteria for a Usuario de Patrón de Alto Consumo and the form and frequency of reporting to CONUEE, 15 November 2018. Threshold and reporting window.
• CONUEE, Usuarios de Patrón de Alto Consumo program material. Thresholds of 45 GWh of electricity a year or 100,000 barrels of crude oil equivalent, and the 1 March to 30 June capture period.
• Comisión Reguladora de Energía, RES/151/2016, Código de Red, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 8 April 2016, and CRE's Guía sobre los requerimientos técnicos del Código de Red aplicables a Centros de Carga. Applicability by voltage level, medium tension requirements and the 9 April 2019 compliance date.
• Comisión Reguladora de Energía, Acuerdo A/158/2024, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 24 January 2025. GDMTH threshold of 100 kW per month in medium voltage, capacity and distribution charges on kW, and base, intermediate and peak energy periods.
• SEMARNAT, aviso on the Factor de Emisión del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional 2024, 28 February 2025, at 0.444 tCO2e per MWh. Prior year factor 0.438 tCO2e per MWh.
• GHG Protocol, Scope 2 Guidance, 2015. Location based and market based reporting methods.
• Ley del Sector Eléctrico, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 18 March 2025. Distributed generation permit exemption raised to 0.7 MW.

Note: Statements about how Mexico Energy Partners delivers the service, including remote delivery, the absence of vendor commission and the way scope and fees are set, are descriptions of the firm's own commercial terms rather than public data.