Your blackout cost estimate is too low

A COPARMEX Chihuahua survey of its member businesses found that 93% reported electricity supply interruptions in the previous four weeks, according to reporting on the survey published by Quadratín Chihuahua on July 7, 2026. Of the affected businesses, 82% took three or more blackouts in that window. A quarter reported more than ten. Some 84% of them reported or estimated an economic loss, and 45% put the figure above 10,000 pesos. Chihuahua is not an incidental data point. It sits inside the same nearshoring-driven industrial corridor that carries a disproportionate share of the country’s heavy industrial load, alongside the mining and steel operations of Coahuila, Sonora, and Zacatecas.

The 10,000 peso threshold in that survey is a useful floor for a small business tracking a single register or refrigeration unit. For a steel mill, a mine, or a chemical plant it is close to meaningless. That gap is where the money sits. Both of the widely cited benchmarks measure lost production time. The export manufacturing council INDEX estimated that about 800 member firms lost roughly 200 million dollars per hour during the February 2021 blackout in northern Mexico, a figure COPARMEX repeated during the May 2024 outages. COPARMEX also cites World Bank data showing that companies in Mexico lost 3.4% of sales to power cuts in 2010. Neither number captures what happens after the power comes back on. In steel, mining, and chemicals, that second phase is often the larger one.

A plant manager who budgets backup power investment against a generic per-hour or per-sale benchmark is pricing the wrong risk. The interruption itself is rarely what costs a heavy industrial operator the most. The bigger costs are the process that does not restart cleanly, the material that cannot be recovered, and the safety-driven sequence that has to run in full before production resumes. None of that shows up in a benchmark built from retail and light manufacturing data.

What generic estimates miss

The figures cited above are directionally useful and worth citing in any board conversation. They were built to describe manufacturing broadly. That category is dominated by discrete, restartable processes, where a stopped line resumes close to where it left off once power returns. Steel, mining, and chemicals do not fit. An electric arc furnace holds molten steel at temperature through a continuous energy input, and a sustained interruption risks the melt solidifying inside the vessel. A line that simply stops and restarts never faces that failure mode. Underground mining depends on continuous power for ventilation and for the pumping systems that manage tailings and groundwater. Losing that power can halt the operation outright instead of pausing it, according to a technical continuity framework published by Concel Group, an infrastructure engineering consultancy. A chemical plant running a batch process risks the batch itself, along with any catalyst or intermediate material in process at the moment of interruption. Safety protocols in continuous or hazardous chemical processes typically require a defined restart sequence before production can resume. Restoration speed does not change that.

None of these are edge cases. They are the normal operating profile of steel, mining, and chemicals. Each one converts a power interruption into a cost category a generic per-hour estimate does not price.

Where the real cost is

Build the calculation in four layers, and treat each as additive. The headline hourly figure does not already cover all four. The first layer is direct production loss, the output value forgone for the duration of the interruption itself, valued at contribution margin and not revenue. This is the layer the INDEX and COPARMEX benchmarks describe. It is also the easiest to estimate, because it scales linearly with outage duration.

The second layer is asset and material damage, the cost specific to processes that do not tolerate an uncontrolled stop. A furnace that loses its melt belongs here. So does a batch that has to be discarded instead of recovered, and equipment damaged by an uncontrolled shutdown sequence. Duration is not the driver here. This layer frequently does not scale with the length of the outage at all. A brief interruption at the wrong moment in a heat or a batch cycle can trigger the same loss as a much longer one, because the damage is a function of process timing, not elapsed minutes.

The third layer is the restart cost, the labor, inspection, and safety-sequencing time required before the plant returns to producing output, as distinct from the time the power was actually out. A discrete manufacturing benchmark understates this layer badly. A line that trips and resumes in minutes bears almost no restart cost. A furnace re-heated from a cold or partially solidified state bears a large one, as does a hazardous chemical process that has to complete a full safety-verification sequence before resuming feed.

The fourth layer is precedent-informed. Documented cases are the benchmark. On May 29, 2024, three weeks into that year’s reserve-margin crisis, the Consejo de Cámaras Industriales de Jalisco put its members’ accumulated losses from power outages at 200 to 250 million pesos, about 10.9 to 13.6 million dollars at Banco de México’s FIX rate of 18.4163 pesos per dollar on October 9, 2026. The head of the state’s food industry chamber said individual companies had lost up to 20 million pesos, about 1.1 million dollars (El Informador, May 30, 2024). Neither is a steel, mining, or chemical figure. They do establish that losses in the tens and hundreds of millions of pesos from grid instability are documented outcomes in Mexican industry. Given the process characteristics above, a continuous or batch-process operator should expect its own exposure to sit at or above these benchmarks.

If your backup sizing was built off the 200 million dollar per hour figure alone, the asset-damage and restart layers are the two you can still price from your own outage log this quarter. Talk to an advisor.

What this means for backup power

Sum all four layers. That changes the return calculation on backup power investment materially, and relying on the first layer alone will not get you there. A BESS or hybrid backup system sized only against the direct production-loss layer will be undersized for a steel, mining, or chemical operation. It prices the interruption and ignores the asset damage and restart cost that follow it. Quartux, a Mexican storage vendor, puts the payback on an industrial BESS paired with solar at three to five years. That payback compresses when a plant adds the asset-damage and restart-cost exposure a generic sizing exercise leaves out. The Plan México decree allows an immediate deduction on new fixed assets of 41% to 91% for investments made in 2025 and 2026 and 35% to 89% from 2027 through September 30, 2030, depending on the asset and the activity it serves. Electricity generation and distribution equipment is listed at 56% and 49%. The decree has no line for battery storage, and each project needs clearance from an evaluation committee. For a plant that models its full exposure and acts inside the current schedule, that shortens the payback again.

The reserve-margin backdrop makes this a live risk, not a planning abstraction. National electricity demand grew 3.4% and 3.5% in 2022 and 2023, while transmission infrastructure expanded by only 0.09% and 0.10% in those same years, according to the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness. During the 2024 crisis cited above, operating reserves fell below the 3% emergency threshold, against the 6% the system needs for normal operation. A grid running that close to its limits does not give a continuous-process operator the option of treating interruption risk as remote.

What no data can price

Nobody publishes an average cost for an electric arc furnace losing a melt to power loss, for a mining operation’s flood recovery after a dewatering failure, or for a chemical plant’s batch loss from a mid-process interruption. Those costs swing enormously with furnace size, batch value, and how far into the process the interruption lands. A number built from outside data would understate the calculation for some operators and overstate it for others. Your own process data holds the figure. So do your documented near-misses. Model the asset-damage and restart-cost layers from those, and not from an industry average that has never been published in reliable form.

The counter-case worth naming

Not every heavy industrial facility carries this exposure equally. Some plants already run dedicated onsite generation, islanding capability, or a process designed with built-in interruption tolerance. That is common at newer chemical facilities built with continuous operation risk in mind. Those sites have already priced and engineered around most of the exposure above. A fresh capital request layered on top of existing protection is a weaker case. COPARMEX Chihuahua also reported that small service and retail businesses were hit hardest, and it published neither the sample size nor the mix of respondents. A large steel, mining, or chemical operator with its own substation and dedicated feeders may see better reliability than the regional average the survey reports. Verify your own outage history against your own metering data before assuming it matches the regional pattern. The survey was built on a different population of respondents.

How to build your own estimate

Log every interruption against your own process timeline, not against its duration alone. Record what stage of the heat, batch, or extraction cycle each outage hit, because the asset-damage and restart-cost layers depend on timing within the process, not on how many minutes the power was out.

Price all four layers separately for your own operation: production loss at contribution margin, asset and material damage, restart labor and safety-sequencing time, and a documented-precedent check against the Jalisco figures above. A capital request built on the sum of four is a stronger board case than one built on the first layer alone.

Size backup power against your worst-case process-timing scenario, not your average outage duration. A battery system sized for a typical two-hour interruption may still leave you exposed to the specific moment in your melt or batch cycle where a brief loss causes disproportionate damage.

Verify your own outage history before assuming a regional survey applies to your facility. A dedicated substation or existing onsite generation may already reduce your exposure below what the Chihuahua figures suggest for the region as a whole. That verification should come before a capital request is built, not after.

Sources

• COPARMEX Chihuahua member survey findings that 93% of surveyed businesses reported electricity interruptions in the previous four weeks, and that of the affected businesses 82% had three or more interruptions, one in four had more than ten, 84% reported or estimated economic losses, and 45% reported losses above 10,000 pesos. Quadratín Chihuahua, “9 de cada 10 empresas de Coparmex Chihuahua afectadas por apagones,” July 7, 2026.
• INDEX estimate that about 800 member export firms lost roughly 200 million dollars per hour during the February 2021 blackout in northern Mexico. Forbes México, “Maquilas mexicanas pierden 200 mdd cada hora por apagón en norte del país,” February 16, 2021.
• World Bank finding that companies in Mexico lost 3.4% of sales to power cuts in 2010, and the INDEX hourly estimate as repeated in May 2024. COPARMEX, “Presenta Coparmex estrategia contra los apagones y propone plan ‘Luz limpia para todos los mexicanos’,” May 24, 2024.
• Continuous power dependency in underground mining for ventilation and tailings and groundwater pumping systems. Concel Group, technical continuity framework on operational continuity management in mining.
• Consejo de Cámaras Industriales de Jalisco estimate of 200 to 250 million pesos in accumulated losses from power outages, and the Cámara de la Industria Alimenticia de Jalisco report of individual companies losing up to 20 million pesos. El Informador, “Pegan apagones al Centro, Tesistán y El Salto,” May 30, 2024.
• Dollar equivalents of peso figures converted at the FIX exchange rate of 18.4163 pesos per US dollar. Banco de México, October 9, 2026.
• Payback of three to five years for an industrial BESS paired with solar. Quartux, “Apagones en México: impacto y solución para su planta,” January 2, 2026.
• Immediate deduction rates of 41% to 91% for 2025 and 2026 and 35% to 89% for 2027 through September 30, 2030, with electricity generation and distribution equipment at 56% and 49%. Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, Plan México fiscal stimulus decree, Diario Oficial de la Federación, January 21, 2025.
• National electricity demand growth of 3.4% (2022) and 3.5% (2023) versus transmission infrastructure growth of 0.09% and 0.10% in the same years. Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad (IMCO), “Sin transmisión eléctrica no será posible acelerar la transición energética,” September 19, 2024.
• Operating reserve margin below 3% and the emergency operating state declared on May 7, 2024, against the 6% minimum the Código de Red requires. CENACE statement reported by El Financiero, May 8, 2024, and Comisión Nacional de Energía, “Reporte de Confiabilidad del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional, Edición 2024.”