Juchitán, Oaxaca.- The energy company of Italian origin Enel has already begun talks with the electricity regulator to migrate its self-supply plants to the wholesale electricity market, a natural process contained in the regulations of the electricity industry, but which has been complicated for many companies. in the midst of changes in the policy dictated by the presidency.
The company, one of the great winners of the electricity auctions of the past administration, has 19 plants in the country. Three of them work with a self-supply permit, a modality created more than a decade ago so that industrial clients would have their electricity consumption guaranteed due to the low supply that the state-owned CFE could offer at that time, but which have been constantly criticized by the current federal government to the point of proposing its disappearance.
The first of Enel’s self-supply plants — a hydroelectric plant in Michoacán — should obtain a single generation permit in the middle of next year, when the permit that was granted will expire.
“We are already starting talks with the authorities to migrate auto-supply to the wholesale market next year, in 2023,” said José Luis Navarro, Enel’s country manager, who only started work last September. “They have just started [the talks], there is still 2022 to go and it will be until 2023, but we wanted to anticipate and have an open dialogue and for now the talks are going well.”
The regulation states that once the validity of the permits ends, the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) must carry out the procedure so that the assets can offer their generation as one more plant on the market. But the proceedings have been capped for reasons the regulator has not officially disclosed.
Some self-supply plants have already been disconnected from the network after not being able to renew their interconnection contracts with the state-owned CFE. Users of these types of assets — corporates and industrials — have also already started accelerating their exit from the schemes, according to the regulator’s filings.
A source within the CRE told Expansión a few weeks ago that not all the migration processes of self-supply plants would be accepted and that there is a probability that some of them will fall into disuse.
The power company Enel is also awaiting the granting of permits to start up three wind power plants resulting from the electricity auctions, built in Coahuila and completed since 2020, but which have not yet received the documentation from the regulator and the National Center for Control of Energy to enter the commercial phase.
“We are finishing a process and I am optimistic and I believe that in the following weeks or months we will have the permits,” said Navarro.
