The National Energy Control Center decreed an Emergency Operational State in the National Interconnected System “so it will carry out operational actions,” according to a brief statement released on the afternoon of May 7.
When an Emergency Operational State is declared, the measures taken to restore stability include everything from demand reductions to supply cuts.
Less than an hour later, CENACE assured that the state of emergency was over and that operations were returning to normal.
There are several reasons why an Operational State of Emergency is declared.
Some include a shortage of natural gas, the same gas used to generate electricity. As happened at the beginning of 2024 due to frost in Texas, extreme temperature episodes, due to heat waves or cold waves, can also generate too much demand for electricity and cause the system’s generation capacity to be exceeded.
Without more details, the consequences could have been all kinds. Of course, there could be power outages affecting homes, businesses and industries, but there could also be damage to electrical infrastructure. CENACE has not issued a communication in this regard.
Unfortunately, Emergency Operational States are not that strange in Mexico. In 2024, the emergencies were activated in mid-January 2024, in September 2023 and in June of the same year. Shortly after that last time, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said that the alert at that time was declared “routine” and ruled out that the state of emergency represented a major difficulty. The emergency on May 7 is already the fourth in an interval of 12 months.
The excess demand on the energy generation system was due to the second heat wave in force in Mexico. It sounds likely, especially considering that the worst days of the second heat wave began on May 5 and are expected to last until May 11, according to Conagua forecasts.
TYT Newsroom