Manuel Barlett in front of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a press conference in 2019. Cuartoscuro
Criticism is raging for the blackout that left more than 10 million people in Mexico without electricity on Monday.
The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has explained that the origin of the failure was the fire in a pasture in Tamaulipas, in the northeast of the country.
The fire "caused the shutdown of two transmission lines," the agency said in a statement.
From the Government of Tamaulipas, those responsible for Civil Protection denounce that the CFE has presented false documentation to link the fire with the power cut.
Without being an apparently serious problem –the electricity supply returned to normal in just over an hour and a half–, the blackout has become entrenched in the political debate and has generated many doubts about the state of the country's electricity grid.
The clash of versions about the origin of the incident and the criticisms of the opposition point to the head of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett, a regular protagonist of controversies during the current Administration.
This Tuesday, the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, alluded to the matter in his usual morning press conference, mainly to defend Bartlett.
“I respect everyone, but there is a group that does not want Manuel Bartlett (...) they campaign against public servants, not against everyone, because those who see moderate strawberries, they do not touch them, the that they see with more definition, closer to what the president thinks, they hit those hard ”.
In addition to the fire, the CFE notes in the statement that the high demand at this time of year and the "maximum historical integration of renewable [energy] generation weakened the system."
In the text, Mario Morales, president of the CFE Strategic Planning Directive Commission, indicates that "due to the excessive number of permits granted for intermittent renewable generation" there was "a failure that generated an unstable condition and that could be isolated over the air transmission network ”.
The opposition has criticized the CFE's explanations.
Senators from the PRI, PAN, PRD and Movimiento Ciudadano have called for an independent investigation to find out what happened and how likely it is to happen again.
Also members of the Morena bench, López Obrador's party.
This Tuesday, Senator Armando Guadiana, from Coahuila, joined the opposition's request for an independent investigation.
Gonzalo Monroy, general director of the energy consultancy GMEC, points out that despite what the CFE has said, the real causes of the failure are not known.
For the expert, the mention of renewables is directly absurd.
“With renewables, the oscillation of frequencies is benign, let's say, less surprising.
That is why they can be adjusted to the frequency rhythms of the network ”, he argues.
Discarded this point, attending to the doubts about the fire, Monroy insists that the causes are unknown.
“And if we don't know the real causes, we have a high probability that this will happen again.
We do not know if it is lack of maintenance.
What we do know is that the transmission line that failed had already had failures since 2016. The CFE already knew it had problems, ”he argues.
Monroy adds that in February, “the CFE launched a tender to reinforce the line.
How far has the tender progressed?
That is the question".
For the expert, another important question concerns the state of the country's supply network.
Bartlett has said these days that a blackout like Monday's, which affected 12 states, will not happen again.
For Monroy, the problem is that no one outside the CFE knows if such an event could happen again, since only the commission knows the state of the network.
The foregoing points directly to the role that the Commission plays in the current government.
"The CFE is a participant in the energy market, not an authority," says Monroy.
“The authority is the National Center for Energy Control (Cenace).
Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that these entities are favoring the CFE.
Cenace appears almost as a general directorate attached to the CFE.
Cenace is part of the problem ”, ditch.