Why a plant at half output still pays close to a full demand charge
Mexican industrial and commercial sites spent the first half of 2020 running at reduced capacity, and many finance teams expected the electricity bill to fall in step with production. It did not. Consumption in kWh tracks output. The demand charge does not. On Mexico's hourly medium-tension tariff, billable demand is built from the peak recorded in the punta period plus reduction-factor-weighted portions of the intermedio and base demands above it, a formula set out in the Tutorial de Tarifas Eléctricas published by COMPITE and GIZ in July 2015 for the hourly medium-tension class. A plant that halves its output but keeps one shift starting at the same hour keeps most of its demand charge.
That gap is the practical case for doing efficiency work now rather than later, and it points at which work to do. It also explains why Mexico's efficiency programs, which were built around equipment substitution and financing, do not automatically hit the part of the bill an operations director is being asked to defend.
This piece covers the programs and the money: who runs what, what each instrument actually finances, and what a business has to satisfy to reach it. For the operating side, on what a facility team can change at the site itself, see the companion piece on shutdown and restart practices that reduce load at a facility.
Who runs the framework
SENER coordinates energy efficiency policy. CONUEE, the Comisión Nacional para el Uso Eficiente de la Energía, is the technical body inside that structure. It was created by the Ley para el Aprovechamiento Sustentable de la Energía, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 28 November 2008, as a decentralized administrative body of SENER with technical and operational autonomy, and its remit has widened since. CONUEE now issues efficiency methodologies, coordinates the municipal street lighting program, and administers the reporting regime for high-consumption users established by the administrative provisions published in the DOF on 15 November 2018.
The Ley de Transición Energética of 2015, published in the DOF on 24 December 2015, still supplies the statutory frame. Its Article 11 requires PRONASE, the Programa Nacional para el Aprovechamiento Sustentable de la Energía, to set an indicative national efficiency target, and Article 12 directs SENER and CONUEE to publish a roadmap for reaching it. PRONASE is where the actions and the sector priorities live. Note who is absent from this list. CRE approves the tariffs, and CFE sells the power. Neither sets efficiency policy, and a proposal that describes a retrofit as regulator-approved is describing a product certification, not a permit.
What each financing instrument actually does
The three names that come up most in Mexican efficiency work are routinely conflated, and each of them is reached through a different door.
- Eco-Crédito Empresarial. A FIDE program that finances the replacement of inefficient equipment in small and medium-sized businesses with certified high-efficiency alternatives, including LED lighting, electric motors, air conditioning, refrigeration and electrical substations, with repayment collected through the CFE electricity bill. This is the instrument most commercial and light-industrial sites will actually use.
- FOTEASE. The Fondo para la Transición Energética y el Aprovechamiento Sustentable de la Energía is a federal trust operating under SENER, established by the Ley para el Aprovechamiento de Energías Renovables y el Financiamiento de la Transición Energética, published in the DOF on 28 November 2008. It is a transition fund, not a consumer credit line. It does not lend to households. Where a private reader meets it is indirectly, through the programs it capitalizes. In the Proyecto Nacional de Eficiencia Energética en Alumbrado Público Municipal, launched in 2010 by SENER, CONUEE, CFE and Banobras, FOTEASE supplies non-recoverable support of 15% of authorized project investment, capped at 10 million pesos, released on completion and subject to a favorable technical review by CONUEE, with Banobras providing the loan.
- FIRA. Four federal public trusts with the Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público as settlor and Banco de México as trustee, operating as a second-tier bank. FIRA channels credit, guarantees and technical assistance to agricultural, livestock, agro-industrial and fishing businesses through financial intermediaries, and it maintains a dedicated energy efficiency program. An agribusiness reaches FIRA through its own bank, not directly.
Household appliance substitution, which is often attributed to FOTEASE, ran through FIDE. The federal appliance replacement program was implemented by SENER and operated by FIDE, covering refrigerators and air conditioning units ten years old or more, per FIDE's own program record from August 2009.
What no-capital structures do and do not promise
Mexico Energy Partners can arrange efficiency improvements under structures that require no upfront capital, where the equipment and installation are repaid out of measured savings. Those structures are subject to credit review and contract term, and eligibility is not automatic. Whether a site qualifies depends on its billing history, its tariff class, the creditworthiness of the entity signing, and whether the measured savings can be isolated cleanly enough to settle against. Treat any savings range quoted before that review as illustrative. Ranges are measured against current CFE supply and vary with tariff class, region, load factor and consumption profile, and none of them can be confirmed for a specific facility without 12 months of billing and, where available, interval data.
Where to look at the facility
LED lighting and efficient monitors are the measures most businesses already know. They cut kWh in every hour the site is occupied, which is real money on the energy charge, and they trim recorded demand modestly. The larger prize at an industrial site is usually elsewhere, in the equipment that sets the peak.
Our assessments use field tooling to shorten the survey. RealWear's head-mounted Android devices let a technician view live thermal images and building diagrams hands-free while walking a plant, which matters most for finding envelope and ventilation losses in older buildings. Heavy industry and agriculture draw more electricity than most other sectors, so irrigation pumping, refrigeration, compressed air and process equipment are where a survey should start. In each case the question to put to the supplier is the same one: does this measure reduce kWh, reduce peak kW, or shift load out of the punta window. Those are three different results and they appear on different lines of the CFE bill.
Discuss an efficiency program and financing route
Mexico Energy Partners reviews a facility's tariff class, load profile and billing history to establish which measures move the energy charge, which move the demand charge, and which qualify under FIDE or development bank financing. An initial review needs 12 months of CFE billing, the tariff class, a load list, and interval meter data where the meter provides it. Nothing in that review guarantees a savings level, financing approval or eligibility for any program.