Is Mexican energy CFE getting in the solar business?

• Mexico's Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) is looking for authorization to establish 350 MW of solar in the state of Baja California. The ranges will be built on the exact same site as the 820 MW Cerro Prieto geothermal project. Nonetheless, it stays vague whether the PV setups mark the company's formal entrance into the solar company.

Mexico's Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and also its CEO, Manuel Bartlett, have been commonly viewed as challenging challengers of renewable energy development for many years.

" A whole campaign is being made that tidy power is the cheapest as well as it is a lie," Bartlett said in March 2019, when he revealed plans to evaluate contracts awarded in 3 renewable resource auctions held by the Mexican federal government considering that the introduction of energy reforms in 2015. "The advocates of tidy energy ought to not be fretted, as we too are not versus it-- we favor increasing clean energy."

Nonetheless, simply a few weeks previously, Bartlett had actually introduced that the CFE would not resume renewable energy auctions. "Why should we get power, if we can generate it?" asked Bartlett. "CFE does not require third-party support. We are doing well, we have actually enhanced ourselves in the first 100 days of the new management. The president has given us sources, he has encouraged us and also we are really satisfied ... CFE will remain to grow."

In spite of CFE's strategies to enhance power production ability via co-generation, the utility has submitted an authorization request to construct its own solar projects in the state of Baja California-- the Cerro Prieto II as well as III projects. According to a record that was lately released by Mexico's Secretariat of Environment and also Natural Resources (Semarnat), the two plants have actually an incorporated of 350 MW. They will certainly be developed near Mexicali, the state resources.

The 150 MW as well as 200 MW installations will be released on the exact same site as the Cerro Prieto geothermal project, which is possessed by the CFE. Thus far, the utility has so far not responded to pv magazine's ask for more information on the projects as well as the company's future solar aspirations.

In mid-2018, CFE revealed strategies to present new "Amparo" lawful provisions versus internet metering guidelines for dispersed generation. Nevertheless, it was later on compelled to junk them, after the demand set off objections from Mexican entities in the renewable resource field, including the Asolmex and also Anes solar associations.