The Código de Red binds any centro de carga that takes power above 1 kV. Contracted demand does not exempt a site. The supply scheme does not exempt it, and a clean CFE payment record does not exempt it. Only baja tensión connections, at 1 kV and below, sit outside the instrument. It is a CRE rule, not a CENACE one, and CRE is the body that fines a plant for breaching it.
The fine band is wide. Article 165 of the Ley de la Industria Eléctrica, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 11 August 2014, sets penalties of 50,000 to 200,000 units of account for failing to observe administrative dispositions issued under the law. INEGI fixed the UMA daily value for 2024 at 108.57 pesos in its comunicado of 9 January 2024. That puts the range at 5.4 million to 21.7 million pesos.
CRE does not publish a register of sanctioned load centers, so nobody outside the agency can say how often the fine is actually levied. That uncertainty is why the file sits at the bottom of the pile in most plants. It is not a reason to leave it there. The question in front of a plant director is whether to fund the measurement work this budget year or carry the exposure into the next one.
Who issued it, and who enforces it
CRE issued the first Código de Red as resolution RES/151/2016, published in the DOF on 8 April 2016. CRE replaced it with RES/550/2021, published in the DOF on 31 December 2021 and in force from 1 January 2022. Both instruments are Disposiciones Administrativas de Carácter General, and both carry CRE's compliance and sanction authority.
CENACE is often named as the author of the rule and as the body that levies the fine. It is neither. CENACE operates the Sistema Eléctrico Nacional and runs the Mercado Eléctrico Mayorista. It does not issue the Código de Red and it does not sanction load centers for breaching it. If a proposal or an internal memo tells you otherwise, the rest of that document is worth re-reading.
What CRE actually requires
The obligation is technical and it is measured. CRE's guidance for centros de carga groups the requirements by connection voltage. A media tensión site, above 1 kV and up to 35 kV, has to evidence voltage variation, transient voltage, frequency variation, short circuit behavior, protections, control systems, information exchange and current imbalance. An alta tensión site, at 35 kV and above, carries all of that and adds power factor, current harmonic distortion and voltage flicker. Power factor is the one parameter that also reaches into media tensión, because RES/550/2021 extended it to media tensión sites with contracted demand of 1 MW or more.
RES/550/2021 put a number on the power factor duty. A load center has to hold power factor between 0.95 in atraso and 1.0 at the point of connection, for at least 95% of monthly operating time, measured in five minute intervals. CRE made that power factor requirement enforceable by 8 April 2026, and it reaches media tensión sites with contracted demand of 1 MW or more as well as every alta tensión site.
The measurement itself is constrained. Studies have to rest on Class A instruments under NMX-J-610/4-3-ANCE or IEC 61000-4-30. A handheld logger from the maintenance store will not produce a defensible file. That one requirement turns the Código de Red from a paperwork task into a procurement task. Class A analyzers are rented or bought, installed at the incoming feeder, and left in place long enough to capture a representative production cycle.
The deadline that has already passed
Load centers energized before 8 April 2016 had until 9 April 2019 to comply under the original code. Where a site was not compliant by that date, CRE required a work plan signed by the legal representative before the deadline. Sites that filed neither did not buy a grace period. They opened a breach that has been running since April 2019.
This is the part that surprises finance. There is no annual filing cycle that resets the clock and no renewal date that concentrates attention. The duty is continuous. A plant that adds a fleet of variable frequency drives, energizes rooftop solar behind the meter or commissions a new furnace has changed the electrical behavior its last study described. The study is out of date whatever the cover page says.
What it costs when the power factor slips
The Código de Red fine is the tail risk. The power factor charge on the CFE bill is the live one, and it runs every month.
CFE applies it under the Acuerdo que modifica las disposiciones complementarias a las tarifas para suministro y venta de energía eléctrica, published in the DOF on 31 October 2000. Below 90%, the surcharge is 3/5 x ((90 / FP) - 1) x 100, expressed as a percentage of the invoice amount. At or above 90% the customer earns a credit of 1/4 x (1 - (90 / FP)) x 100. The acuerdo caps the surcharge at 120% and the credit at 2.5%.
Run that formula on a real bill before the next budget meeting. A site at 0.85 carries a surcharge of 3.5% of the invoice amount. At 0.80 it is 7.5%. At 0.75 it is 12%. Take a plant with a CFE invoice of 4 million pesos a month as an illustration. Moving that site from 0.80 to 0.95 would be worth about 353,000 pesos a month on the published formula, 300,000 of it surcharge avoided and 53,000 of it credit earned.
Automatic capacitor banks are not an expensive class of equipment measured against that. The reason to understand power factor and reactive power before the Código de Red study starts is that the correction usually pays for itself out of the tariff, independently of the compliance file it also supports.
What the rule does not require
Two claims circulate in the vendor market and both are wrong.
The first is that CRE authorizes or certifies the firms that perform Código de Red studies. It does not. CRE's guidance for centros de carga is explicit that the load center may run the studies itself or contract a specialized firm, and that no CRE authorization attaches to the provider. A proposal that leads with a CRE credential is selling something CRE does not issue. Judge the provider on instrument class, measurement window and the engineer who signs the report.
The second is that compliance runs through the supply chain. It does not. The Código de Red binds the registered load center at its own point of connection. Nothing in the instrument creates exposure for a plant through the compliance status of its vendors.
Where the money actually goes
Split the spend into two pools before the budget conversation, because they behave differently.
The first pool is measurement and documentation. Instrument rental or purchase, a technician on site across a representative production cycle, engineering time to model the network and write the studies, and the assembled dossier. It is operating expense, and it recurs whenever the load changes materially.
The second pool is remediation capital. Capacitor banks and automatic correction on the reactive side. Harmonic filters, passive or active, where the drive and rectifier population pushes current distortion past the limit. Relay replacement or coordination changes where the study finds the settings will not clear a fault in time. This pool is capital expense, it is site specific, and nobody can size it before the measurement is done. Any vendor who quotes the remediation before the study has quoted a guess.
Sequence matters more than speed. Scope the campaign once, against the full parameter list the site owes, because repeating a harmonic and flicker survey after a first pass measured only voltage is duplicated cost with no compliance value. Where a site already runs permanent power quality monitoring, part of the evidence base exists and the campaign shortens. Sites that treat power quality in industrial plants as a production issue rather than a compliance issue usually find the two studies are the same study.
The timing pressure is not the regulator. It is the calendar of the work itself. A representative campaign has to sit across a full production cycle. The remediation that follows needs a purchase order, a lead time and an outage window. A site that opens the file in the fourth quarter with a January board commitment has already missed it.
Find out whether your site is in scope
Mexico Energy Partners will review your CFE contract showing tariff class and contracted demand in kW, your medium voltage single line diagram, and any power quality or harmonic study run in the last three years. We tell you which Código de Red parameters your site still has to evidence, which can be built from data you already hold, and what the remaining measurement scope would cost before you commit to it. You supply the documents. We return the gap list and the assumptions behind it. This is a review of your own data, not a statement that your site will pass.
Start on the request for quote page, or send the documents through the form below.
Sources
- Comisión Reguladora de Energía, RES/151/2016, Disposiciones administrativas de carácter general que contienen los Criterios de eficiencia, calidad, confiabilidad, continuidad, seguridad y sustentabilidad del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional: Código de Red, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 8 April 2016. Issuing authority and original instrument.
- Comisión Reguladora de Energía, RES/550/2021, Código de Red, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 31 December 2021, in force 1 January 2022. Replacement instrument in force at the date of writing.
- Comisión Reguladora de Energía, Guía sobre los requerimientos técnicos del Código de Red aplicables a Centros de Carga, gob.mx, undated guidance page consulted June 2024. Requirements by connection voltage, Class A instrument requirement, the 9 April 2019 deadline and the absence of any CRE authorization for study providers.
- Ley de la Industria Eléctrica, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 11 August 2014. Article 165 sanction schedule.
- Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, comunicado de prensa 10/24, valor de la UMA para 2024, 9 January 2024. Daily value of 108.57 pesos, in force from 1 February 2024.
- Acuerdo que modifica las disposiciones complementarias a las tarifas para suministro y venta de energía eléctrica, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 31 October 2000. Power factor surcharge and credit formulas and their caps.
- Greenberg Traurig, Código de Red: Disposiciones Administrativas de Carácter General que contienen los Criterios de Eficiencia, Calidad, Confiabilidad, Continuidad, Seguridad y Sustentabilidad del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional, January 2022. Power factor band, measurement basis and the 8 April 2026 compliance date for media tensión sites of 1 MW or more and alta tensión sites.