Mexico’s National Center for Energy Control (Centro Nacional de Control de Energia: “CENACE”) Publishes Rules for Establishing the Infrastructure Requirements for the Interconnection of Power Plants and Connection of Charging Stations (centros de carga)

On June 2, 2015, CENACE published in the Federal Gazette of the Federation (Diario Oficial de la Federación) the Rules for Establishing the Infrastructure Requirements for the Interconnection of Power Plants and Connection of Charging Stations (the "Rules").

The general purpose of the Rules is to establish the types of studies that power plants or charging stations may request CENACE to conduct in order to determine the specific requirements needed to interconnect to the National Transmission Network ("NTN") or the General Distribution Networks ("GDN") for:

  1. New power plants (or for any increase in the capacity or change of the interconnection point of existing power plants).
  2. New charging stations (or for any increase in the contracted demand or change of the interconnection point of existing charging stations).

The Rules are applicable to:

  1. Any power plant, with a net generation capacity of at least 0.5 MW, that intends to connect to the NTN or GDN.
  2. Any increase in the net generation capacity of a power plant of least 10 percent or more, provided that the total net generation capacity, including the increase, is at least 0.5 MW, and including repowering projects that are currently interconnected to the NTN or DGN. If the increase in capacity is less than 10 percent, the capacity may be increased without carrying out the relevant studies, provided that this could only happen once per power plant.
  3. Change or add an interconnection point for an existing power plant with a net generation capacity equal or greater than 0.5 MW.
  4. Any (i) project for the connection of charging stations with a demand of at least 3 MW or (ii) qualified users participating in the market that intend to connect to the NTN or GDN with a transmission line of at least 69 KV. The demand value will be updated annually to comply with the Electric Industry Law (Ley de la Industria Eléctrica).
  5. Increases in the contracted demand of an existing charging station of at least 10 percent and that is currently connected using a transmission line of at least 69 KV. If the increase in the demand is less than 10 percent of the original contracted demand, demand may be increased without carrying out the relevant studies, provided that this could only happen once per charging facility.
  6. Change or add an interconnection point for (i) existing charging stations with a demand of at least 3 MW or (ii) qualified users participating in the market, that intend to connect with a transmission line of at least 69 KV.

A complete Spanish version of the Rules is available.

Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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