Innovation

Affordable clean energy is ruled by simple supply and demand and is grounded in the financial market.

ORCA specifically seeks out the cheapest price in the market, no matter what the source is. They fund these purchases and can thus offer a fixed rate to their customers. If their Mwh is higher than what is available, they recalculate and decide whether it's still cheaper to buy clean energy at the current time or not. If the price is higher than non-renewable energy, they dispatch the remaining load to Comisión Federal de Electricidad (Known as CFE, the state-owned electric utility of Mexico).

With these changes at ORCA's core business, the company can more cheaply provide clean energy and clean energy generators.

Inspiration

After the imminent electrical crisis that Mexico City was about to suffer in 2015, a group of entrepreneurs and technicians gathered together to find solutions to a very serious problem: lack of energy and a very limited electrical infrastructure.

As a result of this meeting, ORCA was born. While it is a business and they do make a profit, their goal was to offer accessible, clean energy solutions to the people of Mexico.

Overall impact

One of the short term effects is that Qualified Users can now celebrate contracts of 1 to 3 years, while traditionally these contracts have a lifespan of 10-15 years with a price of Mwh that can anticipate the variances of the price through these years.

Having these short-term contracts gives a Qualified User the choice of moving on to a new supplier or even restructuring their contract every once in a while.

In the long run, ORCAs customers pay from 80% to 90% of the total they used to pay before.

Business benefit

Because the business has a great, positive relationship with CFE and CENACE, ORCA has been established as a leader in the industry and has now developed an expansion plan across the country.

Being able to offer cheaper prices, short-term contracts, and optimization of clean energy solutions have opened many doors with new customers as well.

Social and environmental benefit

Objectively, the less non-renewable energy is used, the greater benefit for society. While ORCA makes clean energy more accessible to its customers, they simultaneously also stop buying non-renewable energy from CFE. This results in reduced overall pollution near the plants where energy is generated!

Interview

Sergio Valdez Galan, Commercial Coordinator