CFE’s New Tulum Plan Fixes Power Grid Issues

TULUM — With the presence of municipal authorities and representatives from the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the implementation of a pilot program for electric energy micromeasurement began in the irregular settlement of Tumben Kin, an area that has operated with informal connections and constant supply failures for over eight years.

The project, presented to residents during an informational meeting, establishes that each transformer installed in the neighborhood will issue a collective bill integrating the total consumption of all users connected to that point. This scheme will allow the CFE to maintain more precise control of the load on the grid and reduce the risks of overheating, blackouts, and energy leaks.

To guarantee proportional billing, each home and business will be equipped with a micromeasurement device that will record its particular consumption. This information will allow for the fair distribution of the total amount of the collective bill among the users, avoiding generalized charges or estimates without a real reference. Inhabitants will pay only for the energy they use, a constant demand from neighborhoods undergoing regularization.

During the meeting, the leader of the Pluricultural Ethnic Committee of Tulum, Atilano Rejón Arana, recalled that this scheme has been in negotiation since 2019 and that its start-up represents "the first effective step" towards formalizing the service in settlements where it is still not possible to contract an individual line due to their regularization status. He emphasized that the reading will be bimonthly and that the system will allow the community to maintain order in consumption while the legal process advances.

For his part, the Secretary General of the Municipal Government, Johny Monsreal Padilla, stated that the informal use of energy in various neighborhoods has caused constant blackouts and risks due to overload. He indicated that micromeasurement and collective billing seek to reverse these conditions, improve grid safety, and prepare the way for the future individual contracting of the service.

The pilot program in Tumben Kin will be evaluated over the coming months. If the results are favorable, the model will be replicated in other irregular settlements that maintain active regularization processes and have expressed a willingness to move forward with the formalization of their electricity consumption.