The National Energy Control Center (Cenace), operator of the Mexican electrical system, declared an operational state of emergency for almost five hours on Tuesday afternoon: 48 minutes between 5:04 p.m. and 5:52 p.m. and another four hours later, between 7:10 p.m. and 11:10 p.m. As a result, several states in the country recorded electricity blackouts, during one of the days with the most intense temperatures of the second heat wave. According to a count carried out by Millenniumat least 15 entities suffered the cuts: San Luis Potosí, Mexico City, Hidalgo, Zacatecas, Veracruz, Puebla, State of Mexico, Chiapas, Querétaro, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Tamaulipas, Campeche, Aguascalientes and Colima.
The problem began at 4:05 p.m. and spread. “Wind generation decreased by around 395 W [vatios] compared to what was scheduled and due to the effect of cloudiness in the Bajío region, photovoltaic generation decreased by 380 MW [megavatio]so in total 1,668 MW of the total generation were unavailable, that is, 3.34% of the maximum demand of the day in the National Interconnected System,” the organization reported in a statement.
Upon encountering problems in the energy “generation capacity,” Cenace did not recover to 6%, as established in its regulations, and at 5:04 p.m. they declared the first operational state of emergency, which implies “rotatingly interrupting the supply of electrical energy in 200 MW (which represents 0.4% of demand in that period).
By 5:52 p.m. they recovered the 200 MW they needed, so the status of the problem went from emergency operational state to alert operational state. But the problem was not solved and between 6:53 p.m. and 7:31 p.m. the system lost 1,299 MW of energy “generation capacity,” which prolonged the supply blackouts until the night. “At 8:10 p.m., the reconnection of the affected electricity supply began, with this process expected to conclude around 11:00 p.m.”
Cenace is an independent operator that is defined as “a decentralized public body whose objective is to exercise operational control of the National Electric System (SEN); the operation of the Wholesale Electricity Market (MEM) and guarantee impartiality in access to the National Transmission Network (RNT) and the General Distribution Networks (RGD).”
The National Energy Control Center (Cenace) also declared an emergency at the beginning of the year due to the low temperatures recorded in Texas, United States. The Government then tried to prevent an energy shortage in the country as occurred in February 2021, after several winter storms that froze the facilities that distribute natural gas to Mexico.
This Tuesday, the heat raised thermometers to the point that Mexico City broke a temperature record, reaching 33.4 degrees, according to data collected by the National Meteorological Service (SMN) at the facilities of the Observatory of Tacubaya. The country is facing the second heat wave of the spring season, which has led to high temperatures exceeding 30 degrees throughout the country.
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