The Mexican government announced this Tuesday the construction of a solar thermal plant in Baja California Sur with an investment of $800 million, approximately 1.6 billion pesos. During the daily presidential press conference, Luz Elena González, Secretary of Energy, stated that “this project sets a unique precedent, being the first of its kind in Mexico and accelerating the achievement of our energy transition goals, which we established by law would be at least 35% of electricity generation with clean, renewable energy by 2030.” Baja California Sur is a state isolated from the national electricity grid and faces blackouts and power outages during the hottest months of the year.
This plant would consist of two plants. According to the information provided, this type of technology does not interrupt electricity production during non-sunlit hours, one of the criticisms associated with photovoltaic stations. “It’s called central tower solar thermal power technology,” explained Jorge Marcial Islas, Undersecretary of Planning and Energy Transition.
Basically, there’s a large 100-meter tower in the center of countless mirrors. These reflect sunlight toward a receiver at the top of the structure, which is used to create steam and drive a turbine to generate electricity. What’s different is that this heat can be conserved “in a thermal storage tank that will be insulated,” and “even if the sun goes down, we can continue generating electricity,” Islas said.
This announcement, however, is a long shot. There’s still no land for its possible installation, nor is there a bidding process. Both aspects, they stated at the press conference, are expected to be ready before the end of the year, but they didn’t rule out completion until early 2026. Construction will be carried out with the Federal Electricity Commission, and they promise it will be completed within 48 months.
Baja California Sur is one of the areas hardest hit in Mexico by blackouts and outages due to its lack of connection to the National Interconnected System. This forces the state to generate its own electricity using two systems, Mulegé and Baja California Sur, which are unable to meet demand, especially during the hottest months of the year. The last reported outages were in July, and the local press headlined, “The Blackouts Have Begun,” a mixture of resignation and custom.
A renewable energy solution is a novelty for Baja California Sur’s energy situation. The plants in its systems operate primarily with fossil fuels such as fuel oil, a byproduct of the petroleum refining process with high levels of pollution, or natural gas. In 2021, then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador triumphantly claimed that the Federal Electricity Commission had solved the problem when he inaugurated four aeroderivative turbogas units, similar to aeronautical turbines but adapted to produce electricity and using natural gas. He then promised a thermoelectric plant for delivery in 2024, but it never arrived. The closest thing to this was the announcement in March of an internal combustion plant project in Los Cabos, with an investment of $272 million, or more than 5 billion pesos.
These projects are in addition to the CFE’s 2025-2030 Expansion Plan, which includes 25 new generation projects with an investment of $15 billion, or about 300 billion pesos, primarily for combined-cycle plants using natural gas. This has been the case since June 2023, when the Energy Regulatory Commission decreed that natural gas would be considered a “clean energy” in its statistics.
Mexico is heavily dependent on fossil fuels for its electricity supply. The Ministry of Energy’s latest Clean Energy Progress Report, with data from 2023, estimated that 78.5% of generation is achieved primarily from oil and gas, with 21.5% from renewable sources. Far from the 35% promised for five years, a goal that was already missed in 2024.
Source: msn
