Mexico Energy Insights
More than 20,000 readers each month turn to MEP for clear, timely analysis of Mexico’s electricity market, energy procurement, facility performance and regulation.
What Mexico's grid failures cost plants, and the fix
AMPIP found that 91% of Mexican industrial parks experienced energy supply failures during 2023, and on 7 May 2024 CENACE declared an operating emergency and shed up to 2,610 MW. This brief separates the...
How one plant found MXN 8.4 million in annual savings
A manufacturing plant in San Luis Potosí cut annual energy cost by more than MXN 8.4 million, roughly USD 400,000 to 450,000 at May 2025 exchange rates, through gas fired peak shaving, new and...
When battery storage pays for a Mexican industrial plant
Simple payback on MXN 25 million of installed battery cost against MXN 3 million of annual savings is 8.3 years, not seven. CRE Acuerdo A/113/2024, published in the DOF on 7 March 2025, gives...
What Mexican plants should cut first as gas prices rise
Henry Hub averaged USD 2.19 per MMBtu across 2024 and USD 4.13 per MMBtu in January 2025, with a daily high of USD 9.86 on 17 January 2025, according to the EIA Short-Term Energy...
What a modeled energy audit found at a Mexican plant
An energy audit at a manufacturing plant modeled 18% lower annual electricity consumption and 25% lower CO2 from chiller controls, power factor correction and a 500 kW rooftop array. Those are model outputs, not...
What industrial energy audits should deliver in Mexico
Industrial electricity costs in Mexico rose 33% between December 2018 and August 2024 on INEGI data. What decides whether an audit repays its fee is narrower than a savings percentage: which line of the...
What Mexico's discharge rules cost an industrial plant
Article 282 of the Ley Federal de Derechos exempts a discharger from the federal discharge duty in any quarter its effluent stays inside the permissible limits, but only where the site metered every outfall...
Power factor surcharges on Mexican industrial electricity bills
A metered power factor of 0.82 adds 5.9% to a CFE invoice under the recargo formula published in the DOF on 31 October 2000, and the 90% threshold belongs to the tariff, not to...
Net zero roadmaps in Mexico and what billing data proves
A Mexican site whose direct and indirect emissions reach 25,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year reports them to the Registro Nacional de Emisiones, so the baseline becomes a filing rather than a management...
What sub-metering saves on CFE industrial tariffs
CFE bills medium voltage demand on the highest fifteen minute average of the billing period, so sub-metering pays back by identifying the loads inside that window rather than by cutting kWh, and the US...
What poor power quality costs a Mexican plant
A Mexican load center billed at 0.85 power factor pays a surcharge of 3.5% on its entire CFE invoice under the tariff provisions published in the DOF on 31 October 2000. Every centro de...
A four-hour net zero review for Mexican mines
Mining and metallurgical operations affiliated to CAMIMEX consumed 12,200 GWh in 2022, split about 52% electricity and 48% fuel, and emitted around 10.11 million tonnes of CO2e. With diesel at 25.622 pesos per liter...
Waste heat recovery economics in Mexican industrial plants
CENACE reports an average local marginal price of 613.63 pesos per MWh in the day ahead market across the Sistema Interconectado Nacional for the week of 18 to 24 August 2024. Most industrial heat...
Cutting energy costs at automotive plants in Mexico
INEGI reported on 9 July 2024 that Mexican plants built 1,996,136 light vehicles from January to June 2024. The electricity behind that output is priced by CFE's GDMTH demand charges, and a handful of...
Código de Red obligations and exposure for industrial plants
CRE issued the Código de Red, not CENACE, and CRE is the body that sanctions a load center for breaching it. Any site connected above 1 kV is in scope, article 165 of the...
What Mercado de Balance de Potencia costs plants
CENACE settled the Mercado de Balance de Potencia for production year 2023 at 6,549,608.65 pesos per MW-year in the SIN, against 3,184,022.03 for 2022. The obligation is set by a plant's average demand across...
Analytics applications and limits in Mexican energy procurement
What analytics can do for a Mexican plant is decided by the 1 MW usuario calificado threshold in the Décimo Quinto Transitorio of the Ley de la Industria Eléctrica. Below it, a site buys...
Usuario Calificado eligibility, timelines and obligations
The Usuario Calificado threshold is 1 MW of maximum demand measured at a centro de carga over the previous twelve months, not annual consumption. CRE registration creates the status, but buying directly in the...