CFE’s Proyecto Oasis BCS in Mulegé, Baja California Sur, marks Mexico’s first state-led deployment of green hydrogen for utility-scale electricity generation.
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Proyecto Oasis: CFE’s First Green Hydrogen Deployment Tackles an Isolated Grid
The hybrid system combines a 72MW photovoltaic plant, 20MW of BESS, 20MW of electrolyzers, and 6MW of hydrogen fuel cells to supply approximately 40,000 households while eliminating diesel imports for the municipality. The green hydrogen logic is specific to Mulegé’s geography: the city’s grid is entirely isolated from the National Interconnected System, making hydrogen storage the only viable mechanism for converting daytime solar surplus into firm nighttime supply.
URSUS Energy Scales Coatzacoalcos LNG Project to Full US$2.1 Billion
URSUS Energy and Samsung E&A formally raised the investment envelope for their Coatzacoalcos-PODEBIS II LNG terminal to US$2.1 billion — a significant step up from the US$450 million first-phase figure disclosed at the June FEED-EPC signing — targeting 2.1Mt/y of export capacity and first cargo in late 2029. The feedgas source is the nitrogen-contaminated associated gas that PEMEX currently flares at record highs: 618Mmcf/d in 1Q26, equivalent to nearly 13% of total gas production.
Mexico’s 2,159MW Wind Pipeline Shifts Toward Yucatán and Tamaulipas
A portfolio of 2,159MW of new wind capacity is entering the regulatory pipeline under private and mixed development frameworks, representing an estimated US$4–5 billion in investment and a decisive geographic shift away from Oaxaca toward Yucatán and Tamaulipas. Key projects include Terralia’s 705MW hybrid park with 950MWh of storage, Genux Power’s 252MW Panamá park in Mérida, Idea Energía’s 208MW Vientos del Caribe in Quintana Roo, Elecnor’s 194.4MW Vientos de Panabá, and Revolve Renewable Power’s 229.5MW combined portfolio in Tamaulipas — the latter already holding a final CNE generation permit.
Chihuahua’s Grid Crisis Runs Deeper Than Summer Heat
The Chihuahua state government formally acknowledged on July 1 that its electrical infrastructure is operating at its limit, with recurring outages cascading into water supply failures as power cuts knock out JMAS extraction wells in Ciudad Juárez. CFE has denied a national supply crisis and pointed to its MX$35 billion Chihuahua investment program under its 2024–2030 strengthening plan. But an independent analysis reveals a more structural driver: over 7,000 clandestine agricultural water wells are drawing unregistered, unauthorized industrial-scale loads from substations that were never designed to serve them.
Hitachi Energy: Mexico’s Transition Bottleneck Is the Grid, Not the Generation
Hitachi Energy’s Country Managing Director for Spain, Alfredo García-Borreguero, argues that the primary obstacle to the energy transition is no longer renewable generation capacity but grid infrastructure’s ability to absorb, balance, and distribute it — a diagnosis that maps precisely onto Mexico’s documented position, where over 60% of the national transmission network operates near maximum capacity while the country simultaneously tries to integrate 7,411MW of new renewable awards. As thermal plants are displaced, the stabilization services they provided — frequency regulation, voltage support, reactive power compensation — must be replaced by purpose-built technology such as STATCOM and e-STATCOM systems, already specified in CFE’s Sonora-Sinaloa-Nayarit transmission corridor.
