Electrical blackout

Yesterday, June 22, a mega blackout was recorded in the Yucatan Peninsula.

According to figures from the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the interruption of the electricity service affected 1.3 million users in Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán.

The cause, according to the CFE itself, was the accident that a worker who was carrying out maintenance work had.

The latest reports indicate that the worker is hospitalized and stable.

The interruption of electricity service also affected internet and mobile telephony services.

The mishap was due to “the departure of transmission lines in 400 Kv”, detailed the peninsular division of the CFE in a statement.

This failure caused six high voltage lines to affect the three entities, a figure that represents 62% of the total users found in that region.

According to the official explanation, the blackout was due to an accident. However, specialists in the field of energy point out that the recent blackouts originate from a structural problem in the electrical system.

Specifically, it is explained by the lack of investment in electric power transmission and distribution lines in the national territory.

Yesterday’s is the third blackout recorded in the country this year.

According to the count of Víctor Ramírez, spokesman at the Mexico Climate and Energy Platform, the three blackouts that have been registered, including yesterday’s, are: 1.- The one on May 27, in the Yucatan peninsula;, 2. – June 5, in Baja California and 3.- yesterday June 22 in the Yucatan Peninsula.

The energy expert warns that in all three cases, the blackouts could have been prevented with projects that were already underway and were cancelled. He thus recorded it on his Twitter account.

For a long time, Ramírez had been warning of the imminence of large blackouts in different parts of the national territory, precisely due to the lack of investment in the distribution network.

The energy consultant, Pablo Zárate, through the same social network referred to what Cenace recently published, in which he points out that since 2021 “80% of the year was at risk of (blackouts) due to the risk of an N-2 contingency.”

Since 2017, Zárate notes, the need to reinforce the transmission network was identified.

The also collaborator of El Economista says that the transmission network is increasingly congested, since it has practically not grown in this six-year term.

From the private sphere, the remarks have the same meaning. The Mexican government, the CFE, has not increased the transmission network by even 1%.

It is the bottleneck not only for the efficient operation of the electricity market, but also for economic development.

If this bottleneck continues, business investment projects are at risk because they will not have the electricity supply they require.

It will be an obstacle to achieving the investments in 10 industrial parks that are being considered in the Transisthmian Corridor, and the multimillion-dollar investments in Yucatan.

The question is why not invest in the electricity transmission network?

Hopefully the worker who had the accident recovers soon. It is also desirable that structural problems be overcome.

glimpses

SOCIAL POLICY.- If the design of social programs is not corrected, their financing will be increasingly difficult, to the extent that at the end of the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the pension program for the elderly will become “a danger” that threatens to “thunder public finances”.

The warning is from Máximo Ernesto Jaramillo-Molina, director of the Institute for Studies on Inequality (Indesig).

For this year, the Pension for the Welfare of Older Adults program has an authorized budget of 238,000 million pesos (mdp), while the other social programs obtained 200,000 mdp, which shows the degree of economic commitments that the government has. federal government.