The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) of Mexico generated 19,568 gigawatt hours last year through hydraulic sources, which meant the lowest flow since 2004 and exhibited the weakness of the government's commitment to immediately improve clean generation based on in this technology.
The hydroelectric generation of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) of Mexico was 19,568 gigawatt hours last year, which provided only 7.7% of the company's total production, when in 2022 it was 14%, with a accumulated 34,110 gigawatt hours in the system through this technology.
This was the lowest flow of hydroelectric generation since 2004, when 19,415 gigawatt hours were recorded, according to data from Sener and Inegi.
Although the increase in this type of production was one of the main plans regarding Mexican clean energy of this six-year period, a reduction of 43% in the generation of the state company in one year is reported, of 36% in contrast to the last year of the last administration, 2018 and 28% in a decade.
And according to the indicators of the Energy Information System of the Ministry of Energy, last year, thermal generation, for example, did have an annual increase of 16% in its production, reaching 199,430 gigawatt hours, and even the generation wind energy from the CFE plus independent energy producers (PIE) that are private and sell exclusively to the state company, increased by 5%, with a report of 1,918 gigawatt hours in one year. Compared to 2018, thermal generation with fossil fuels carried out by the CFE has increased 12%.
After different statements from both President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the General Director of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett, about plans to increase national hydroelectric generation, on July 14, 2021, the CFE Board of Directors approved the modernization of 14 central banks, which would be carried out through a financial mechanism so that the state company could access financing at preferential rates. The Plan would have an investment of US$ 1,000 million to carry out changes to equipment such as turbines, generators and transformers in the existing infrastructure.
Before the members of the Council, Miguel López López, deputy director of Administration and Services of the CFE, then presented this Comprehensive Plan for Modernization of Hydroelectric Power Plants in which the additional gigawatt hours due to modernization would be equivalent to “six wind farms or eight photovoltaic parks of 100 megawatts.” The 14 plants that would be modernized would be inaugurated no later than the first quarter of 2024, since this investment “is the most important in hydroelectric projects and will rescue all the social investment that Mexico has left in these plants,” according to the official.
And according to Carlos Morales Mar, corporate director of Operations, of the CFE, the importance of this Modernization Plan would give 50 more years of life to the useful infrastructure that is made up of 60 hydroelectric plants in the country, to take advantage of all civil infrastructure. existing, with which the aim was to recover the levels by desilting with an entire work program.
And from a hydroelectric generation of 2,823 gigawatts per hour that was reported in July 2021, when the plans were announced, it would increase to 4,660 gigawatts per hour in the first quarter of this year.
Thus, the general director of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett, said that the Hydroelectric Modernization Plan would comply with the presidential instruction to rescue these plants.
Drought, nightmare
However, as stated by the National Water Commission, the most important hydroelectric plants in the country have been affected by the lack of rain and high temperatures in different entities, which has reduced their storage levels to an average of a quarter of their capacity. ability. In fact, some storage dams such as El Novillo, in Sonora, fell by up to 11.2% a month ago, while others such as Huites, in Sinaloa, fell to 16.4%, according to the Northwest Basin Agency of the National Water Commission.
For this reason, last February alone, CFE's hydroelectric generation plus PIE totaled 863,915 gigawatt hours in the company's latest generation report, reaching only 4.9% of total generation, with a reduction of 76.6 % compared to July 2021, which was when the company's Board of Directors presented the plant modernization plan with this technology, which then represented 17.3% of its effective energy production.
Furthermore, not only was effective generation reduced due to the low availability of water and delays in modernization work, but in the future projection of the last National Program for the Development of the National Electric Sector (Prodesen) it only calculated a maximum of 487 gigawatts, that is, 1,350 additional gigawatts less than those projected in the Modernization Plan.
