Whether analytics is worth funding at a Mexican plant is settled by one question, and it is not a question about software. It is whether the site is registered with the CRE as a Usuario Calificado. The 1 MW threshold is set by the Décimo Quinto Transitorio of the Ley de la Industria Eléctrica. The Secretaría de Energía set the concept of demand and the terms for aggregating load centers in an acuerdo published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 1 March 2017. That transitional article stepped the figure down from 3 MW to 2 MW and then to 1 MW. Load centers of at least 25 kW may aggregate to reach it.

A plant below that line, or above it but not registered, buys from CFE Suministro Básico at a published tariff. It has no purchase timing decision. No model, however good, creates one. For that site there is exactly one bill component that responds to prediction, and it is the demand charge.

A registered qualified user has a different set of levers, and none of them is trading. What follows separates the two cases, names the bill line or the contract clause each analytics application actually touches, and sets out the order in which a buyer should spend money on it.

What analytics reaches on a CFE basic supply bill

A medium voltage industrial site on the CFE GDMTH tariff pays for energy in three time bands, base, intermedio and punta, and pays separately for demand through the cargo por capacidad and the cargo por distribución. Demand is not a monthly total. CFE derives it from the highest average power recorded in any 15 minute interval.

That structure defines the only forecasting product worth buying for a basic supply site. It is a demand forecast inside the interval, accurate enough and fast enough to shed a defined load before the 15 minute average closes. A forecast delivered after the interval has closed is a report. It records the charge, it does not prevent it.

The value is arithmetic a plant can do from its own bill. Take the kW of billed demand, multiply by the published cargo por capacidad and cargo por distribución for your CFE division and month, and you have the annual value of one kW of shaved demand. Do that before you look at any vendor. On many industrial bills the demand charges are a minority of the total, and where that is true a demand forecasting project cannot pay back regardless of how well the model performs.

What changes if you register as a Usuario Calificado

Registration moves the plant from a published tariff to a contract, and analytics starts to touch things that were previously fixed. Two of them matter.

The first is contract shape. A supply contract from a Suministrador de Servicios Calificados prices some portion of the load at a fixed rate and leaves the rest exposed to the market. A consumption forecast is what tells you where to set that split. Forecast high and you pay for volume you do not use. Forecast low and the uncovered part settles at whatever the market does. That is a hedging decision against a physical load, not a search for trading profit, and it is worth reading through the mechanics of registering as a Usuario Calificado before assuming the option is open.

The second is Certificados de Energía Limpia. The Lineamientos published by the Secretaría de Energía in the DOF on 31 October 2014 name the Participantes Obligados as Suministradores, Usuarios Calificados Participantes del Mercado, end users on abasto aislado, and holders of Contratos de Interconexión Legados. The obligation is a percentage of the electricity consumed in the obligation period, so the quantity of CELs a buyer must hold moves directly with consumption. The Secretaría de Energía set that percentage at 13.9% for 2022 in an aviso published in the DOF on 31 March 2017, having set 7.4% for 2020 and 10.9% for 2021. A consumption forecast is therefore a procurement quantity for CELs, which is a different use from a price signal. The wider question of renewable energy procurement in Mexico starts from that obligation rather than from a corporate target.

Automated trading is not an option for a Mexican industrial site

Buying and selling power in real time to capture price movements requires registration as a market participant under the Bases del Mercado Eléctrico, published in the DOF on 8 September 2015. A load served by a suministrador does not transact in that market. Its supplier does. Advice that tells a plant manager to trade the spread is describing a role that plant does not hold.

The objective is also wrong. An industrial offtaker is not seeking profit from price movement. It is buying cost certainty against a load it has to run anyway, and the risk it carries is the gap between contracted volume and actual consumption at settlement. Analytics that narrows that gap is worth paying for. Analytics that promises to beat the market is selling a different business.

Battery dispatch carries the same confusion. Exporting stored energy to the grid from a load center is not a free optimization in Mexico. Article 17 of the Ley de la Industria Eléctrica, published in the DOF on 11 August 2014, requires a CRE permit for a central eléctrica of 0.5 MW or more. A plant of any size represented in the wholesale market needs one as well. As of April 2024 Mexican electricity regulation had no dedicated category for storage at an industrial load center. A battery behind the meter is a demand shaving and backup asset here, and the dispatch model should be written against the demand charge, not against a market price.

The order to spend in

Metering first, models second. Most industrial sites in Mexico cannot export their own 15 minute interval data in a usable form. Either the meter is CFE's and the site never requested access, or submetering stops at the main incomer and no one can attribute demand to a line. A forecast built on monthly billing data cannot control a 15 minute interval. That is where most analytics projects fail, and it fails before any model is trained.

The sequence that works is short. Establish interval data capture and retention at the point of supply and at the two or three largest loads. Run twelve months. Only then decide whether the pattern is predictable enough to control, and what the controllable kW is worth against the published cargos. Software bought ahead of that sequence is a subscription against data that does not exist. Sites weighing this should treat it as an energy procurement question with an engineering dependency, not the reverse.

What could make this read wrong

The 1 MW threshold is not a wall. The 1 March 2017 acuerdo allows load centers of at least 25 kW to aggregate, so a portfolio of small sites under common control can reach the register even where no single plant does. A multi site operator that dismisses the qualified user path on the basis of one meter reading has tested the wrong number.

The demand charge case can also fail on its own terms. If a plant runs a flat, continuous load, there is little to shave and the forecast has nothing to act on. The test is not how variable the market is. It is how variable your own 15 minute demand is, and that is answerable from twelve months of interval data without buying anything.

Find out which procurement levers are open to your site

Mexico Energy Partners will review your last twelve CFE bills and your contracted demand in kW. We will confirm whether the site meets the 1 MW threshold on its own or through aggregation, and what the demand charges are costing against the energy charges on your own bill. We will also say which of the two paths, a contract change or demand management, has the shorter route to a result. You supply the bills and the contracted demand. We return the numbers and the assumptions behind them. That answer does not require buying any software, and it is an assessment of your data rather than a promise of savings or of eligibility.

Sources

• Secretaría de Energía, Acuerdo que abroga el diverso del 26 de enero de 2016 y establece el concepto de demanda y los términos de agregación de Centros de Carga para ser considerados como Usuarios Calificados, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 1 March 2017.
• Congreso de la Unión, Ley de la Industria Eléctrica, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 11 August 2014.
• Secretaría de Energía, Lineamientos que establecen los criterios para el otorgamiento de Certificados de Energías Limpias y los requisitos para su adquisición, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 31 October 2014.
• Secretaría de Energía, Aviso por el que se dan a conocer los requisitos para la adquisición de Certificados de Energías Limpias en 2020, 2021 y 2022, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 31 March 2017.
• Secretaría de Energía, Acuerdo por el que la Secretaría de Energía emite las Bases del Mercado Eléctrico, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 8 September 2015.
• Comisión Federal de Electricidad, published tariff schedule for Gran Demanda en Media Tensión Horaria (GDMTH), schedule in force April 2024.