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Power out in Ajijic Village


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We have seen a big increase this year in the number of people reporting issues from very low voltage (measured well below the CFE stated tolerances / range), to brownouts / blackouts, and intermittent outages both short and longer.      The key factors seem to be the growth in the area that increases overall demand, combined with a local grid capacity that was IMHO marginal at best the past few years, along with increasing use & consumption including as mentioned, more homes overall, more homes with AC use, and more pools (thus more pool pumps and some pools using electric heat pumps to heat pools).

Solar electric helps a lot during the day as it is putting energy back into the local area which lessens or eliminates daytime demand in the home that is producing it, plus the excess goes to assist the local grid, thus actually reducing load on the nearby transformers and lines.       

More users are interested in or installing backup systems than ever before, as well, this can also help at night in two ways:

1 - if CFE goes down, the home still has power

2 - a user could choose to even feed from their stored energy at night, lessening the load on the grid as well.

Hopefully CFE has plans to upgrade the local grid to keep up with the growth.      After all, they are the "empresa de clase mundial".     Si?  😉

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Adding solar in Mexico is almost a no-brainer. Payback less than 5 years I'm told by friends.

Adding battery backup to one's solar?  Well I'm not so sure about that one. It's surely a convenience thing...one cannot compute 'payback' as there is 'none'....    Now if I or a housemate needed something like an oxygen concentrator, and if CFE continues to be more unreliable after years of pretty good stability, then maybe yes. Some things are NOT measured by 'payback'.

 

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46 minutes ago, RickS said:

Adding solar in Mexico is almost a no-brainer. Payback less than 5 years I'm told by friends.

Adding battery backup to one's solar?  Well I'm not so sure about that one. It's surely a convenience thing...one cannot compute 'payback' as there is 'none'....    Now if I or a housemate needed something like an oxygen concentrator, and if CFE continues to be more unreliable after years of pretty good stability, then maybe yes. Some things are NOT measured by 'payback'.

 

We are almost completely electric now and rely on our solar panels. 

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ARGH!!! 3:47 am this morning, my UPS's starting to beep/scream and the fans were no longer working. I got up, checked it wasn't just our house but the entire Barrio and called CFE. Was told it was a large outage and should be fixed within 4 hours. Fortunately within 30 minutes or so, it came back on. Good thing as this time of the year without any fans, it was HOT!

Clearly, as more demand is placed on the current transformers and electrical lines, we will continue to see these problems. I've begged CFE for years to help us in the Barrio de San Sebastián. After much effort, petitions from fellow Mexican neighbors, we did get 2 smaller transformers to replace the one small transformer and have had fewer problems but especially during this time of high demand, we're struggling.

Hopefully CFE will be willing and able to provide the electricity for our growing Ribera.  Hope springs eternal.

Val. :)

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29 minutes ago, thevalerieleigh said:

Good thing as this time of the year without any fans, it was HOT!

That's really the worst part of electrical outages for me. I can manage without lights, using candles, if I remember not to open the fridge unnecessarily and open and close it quickly, the food doesn't go bad, and I can even do without fans during the day, but trying to sleep when it's hot with no fan is awful.

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1 minute ago, Mainecoons said:

Small area usually means local transformer or those on the pole circuit breakers.  If a tree limb blowing in the wind bangs two wires together that will happen.

 

Got to be it. Every time the wind blows this happens.  

Will be working on a fix for the house. Did all the math and a ups for refrigerator, water pump/uv light, starlink, tv/nuc, would keep me up for min of 11 hour before needing to recharge and a small gen would take care of that in less then a hour.  Just have to get everything ordered and set up and I won't really care so much about an outage.

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