•THREAT: After failing repeatedly to do it through the courts, Mexico’s state-owned utility (CFE) threatened Tuesday to block solar and wind firms from accessing the national power grid during times of low demand, effectively reducing the amount of energy they can produce.
•COURTS: Since it was announced last June, Mexican courts have slapped down in at least five times the López Obrador government’s attempt to raise transmission fees for clean energy generators. In some cases, fees had been increased nearly 800 percent.
•RELIABILITY: “As a preventive measure in times of low (electricity) demand, (the grid operator) will be forced to take out of service part of the intermittent renewable (electricity) generation to ensure the reliability of the system”, said Luis Bravo, the CFE spokesperson.
•BLACKOUT: During the past few days, CFE has tried to explain the origins of a two-hour blackout that affected one-fourth of Mexico’s customers using a falsified brush fire report and blaming private renewable plants insisting they are unreliable sources of power.
