Another Mexican solar project cancelled due to permit issues

This story was updated on February 9th to say Solarig Mexico is not related in any way to the mentioned solar project.

A Mexican self-supply solar project has been definitively cancelled due to difficulties incorporating new consumers into its permit.

According to developer Rengen Energy Solutions, the US$130mn Rengen solar park in Chihuahua state is no longer moving forward given current regulatory policy towards self-supply projects. 

Mexico's legacy self-supply scheme allows private-to-private energy supply through the creation of self-supply consortiums. The current authorities, including the government and public utility CFE, consider that using the scheme to supply partners within a consortium is illegal. Therefore, the stance of energy regulator CRE has been to deny or ignore requests to modify existing self-supply permits to incorporate new partners.

In practice, this would mean the Rengen solar park could not legally supply any partners, making the plant's operation untenable.

The project has faced issues since at least 2021, when it was put on hold due to the controversial changes made to the electric industry law (LIE) that year, which sought to modify dispatch priority to benefit plants owned by CFE. 

If implemented, the dispatch changes could have hurt the project significantly, Rengen said at the time.

This story was updated on February 9th to say Solarig Mexico is not related in any way to the mentioned solar project. 

This is a translation of Solarig's note.

Solarig, an international reference company in the development of clean energy projects on a commercial scale, is currently promoting a portfolio of more than 2 GW of renewable projects in the Republic of Mexico. With the aim of leading the energy transition towards decarbonization, the more than 250 professionals that make up the Solarig team in Mexico maintain a firm commitment to the development of their activities to comply with international ESG policies, all of which are carried out based on to the highest ethical and transparency standards with administrations, local communities, customers and suppliers.

Currently, Solarig is the largest Operator and Maintainer of Photovoltaic Plants in Latin America and has the operation and maintenance of almost 50% of the installed power in the country. 

The project mentioned in a news item in this outlet is not included in Solarig's development portfolio. Solarig wants to clarify that it has not participated in any of the stages of said project nor has it maintained a relationship with it.