What are the new private energy auctions / long-term power tenders?

4 min readJul 15, 2019

New opportunity for developers, generators, suppliers and consumers (anyone with over 1 MW consumption)

Dear client and friend,

Recently, private organizations announced an initiative to launch new long-term auctions for the purchase and sale of energy and energy-related products (through 5, 10 and 15 years contracts)

This represents a new alternative for project developers, generators, suppliers and consumers after the suspension of the auctions that were previously implemented by CENACE.

These auctions have several advantages:

Allow users to obtain highly competitive fees for the supply of electricity, and allow generators and suppliers to allocate their available electricity and related products.
Are an excellent mechanism to secure the investment required for the development of new power plants; or the financial strengthening of already existing ones.
Generate an organized competition environment that is hard to emulate in the open market, since they get together a large number of buyers and sellers in a single procedure with a single set or rules, increasing the chances of choosing the best prices and products in accordance to the requirements of each participant.

The following entities are allowed to participate:

Any generator, including the generation subsidiaries from the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE)
Any qualified user, including market-participants and non-participants
Any qualified supplier or last-resource supplier

The first edition of this auctions will include the purchase and sale of Energy, Power (Potencia), Clean Energy Certificates (CELS), and a new product called Balancing Energy.

What is Balancing Energy / Electricity Balancing?

Balancing Energy will be provided by plants with firm generation capacity. The product consists on selling or purchasing the obligation to increase or reduce the dispatch of energy when there is intermittency in other plants to answer to the fluctuations of the National Electricity System (SEN) covering shortages or surpluses.

How can we help?

We are a Mexican law firm specialized in energy matters, and we have alliances with technicians and engineers with wide experience in electricity markets, so we are able to provide comprehensive assistance related to:

Determining the convenience of participating in the auctions, as well as designing the best strategy to submit purchase and sale bids.
Registration, assistance in clarification and feedback meetings, and preparation and submission of bids.
Revision of power purchase agreements, assistance in the contracting of financial guarantees, and contractual and regulatory assistance in any stage after the auction (permits, financing, construction, operation, sale, etc.).
Specialized technical assistance in the electricity market including engineering and software solutions, financial and market analysis and evaluation, technical revisions, and development of tools to operate in the market.
Aggregation of load centers to be converted from basic users to qualified users.
Accreditation as generator, supplier or any other market participant.
Compliance and management before CRE and CENACE.
Specialized assistance in any stage of a generation project

Relevant dates: