Importing Mexican wind energy

Fuel Fix:

The historic overhaul of Mexico’s energy sector could shift the direction of its nascent wind power industry to the huge market north of the border.

Texas has tapped the Mexican grid several times this year when available Texas power nearly fell short of winter heating demands, and Mexican officials believe the Lone Star State and California are promising markets for renewable energy.

“Most of the time we import from you, but the few weeks you import from us, it is very good for us,” said Maria de Lourdes Melgar Palacios, undersecretary of hydrocarbons at Mexico’s Ministry of Energy, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.

With constitutional amendments passed late last year, Mexico took the first steps toward opening its nationalized energy industry to private, international investment for the first time since the 1930s.

While much attention has focused on the potential for strengthening Mexican oil production with an infusion of capital and technology, the restructuring also may breathe new life into wind and other electric power generation.

Mexico began developing wind power during the 1990s in the southern state Oaxaca, and since then Mexican regulators have issued permits in other locations, including the border states of Baja California, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon.

North of the border, meanwhile, California has established that at least a third of its electricity must come from clean energy by 2020. The state can’t meet that target with its existing generation, which could give Mexico a huge market for its wind power.

“Clearly, California has the demand and Mexico can produce it,” said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

Mexico has only begun to tap its wind potential, estimated at 71,000 megawatts, enough to supply Texas on all but its hottest summer days.
...

Mexico is a long way from reaching that potential if it ever will.  It has been hobbled by its socialist energy markets for decades and appears to be finally shaking off the cobwebs.  State owned energy companies do not invest in the infrastructure needed to expand capacity and just milk off prior exploration.  Right now it is still too dangerous to send a fracking crew across the Rio Grande to exploit the Eagle Ford formation on that side of the border.  They have to take care of that as well as change their investment policies.