The Reality Check: Why That CFE Bill Can Feel Like a Tax on Comfort
The Taming of the Bill: How We Finally Made Peace with Electricity in Cozumel
You know that specific heaviness in the air here? It hits you the second you step out of the airport doors.
Living in Cozumel is, without a doubt, a dream scenario. It’s the late-morning scuba dives at Palancar, the Sunday cochinita pibil, and the sound of scooters buzzing down Melgar. It is a sensory feast. But let’s be real about the humidity for a second. It’s not just warm; it’s a wet blanket that wraps around you and refuses to let go.
In our 20s, maybe we could have slept with just a ceiling fan and a damp sheet, convincing ourselves it was “authentic.” But we are in our 40s and 50s now. We’ve earned our comfort. We want—and honestly, we need—air conditioning.
And that is where the dream crashes headfirst into a very expensive reality.
For anyone who owns a home on this island, there is a bi-monthly ritual that induces a specific type of anxiety. It’s the arrival of the CFE bill. Whether it’s slipped under your gate or popped up in your email, opening it feels like playing Russian Roulette.
We have a modest home here. For a long time, the bills were manageable. But recently, we started noticing a creep. We were inching closer to the dreaded “DAC” limit. If you don’t know what DAC is, consider yourself blessed. If you do, you know exactly why my stomach was in knots.
So, in an effort to stop hemorrhaging cash and maybe do right by the planet, we looked into solar. What we found wasn’t just a financial fix; it was a total shift in how we live in our own house.
Here is what we learned, the mistakes we almost made, and how we fixed it.
The CFE Boogeyman: Understanding the “Penalty Box”
Before you can solve the problem, you have to respect the mechanics of it.
The CFE (Comisión Federal de Electricidad) is the government-run utility. And to be fair to them, the system is designed with a noble purpose: social subsidy. The goal is to ensure that a local family living in a small casita with three lightbulbs, a fan, and a TV can afford power.
For that basic usage—usually under a few hundred kilowatt-hours (kWh)—the electricity is incredibly cheap. We’re talking roughly 5 cents (USD) per kWh. It’s practically free.
But you and I? We aren’t that profile.
We have pressure pumps for showers, maybe a pool filter running six hours a day, a big fridge, and the holy grail: Mini-Split A/C units.
The CFE pricing model is a steep staircase. As your usage climbs, the government subsidy vanishes. You go from paying pennies to paying 21 cents, then 30 cents per kWh. Suddenly, a month of “comfortable” living results in a bill for 10,000 or even 25,000 pesos ($500 to $1,300 USD).
And then, there is the cliff edge: DAC.
DAC stands for Tarifa de Alto Consumo (High Consumption Rate). If your average consumption over the last six billing cycles (12 months) exceeds the limit for your zone—in Cozumel (Tariff 1D), that’s usually 2,000 kWh every two months—you get kicked into the DAC tier.
Once you are in DAC, there are no steps. There is no subsidized “starter” rate. You pay the maximum rate for every single watt you use, from the very first light switch you flip. It is a financial penalty box, and getting out of it takes months of sweating in the dark to lower your average.
We were flirting with that line. I decided I wasn’t going to cross it.
Why Solar Isn’t Just for “Greenies” Anymore
I’ll admit, I had some preconceptions. Ten or fifteen years ago, residential solar felt like buying a boat—a massive upfront cost that you did because you were passionate, not because it made financial sense.
Back then, you were looking at $15,000 to $20,000 for a system, and the technology was… fine. Not great, just fine.
But while we were busy living our lives, the tech world quietly revolutionized solar. The cost of panels has plummeted, and the efficiency has skyrocketed.
In Cozumel specifically, the landscape has shifted. It used to be a nightmare to import the gear. Now? The supply chains are greased. When I started running the numbers, I realized that solar in Mexico is actually cheaper than in the US, which is already one of the most affordable markets globally.
The math used to say, “You’ll break even in 10 years.” Today, the math says, “You’ll break even in two.”
Yes, two years.
When you stack the sky-high cost of CFE’s DAC rates against the rock-bottom price of modern solar panels, the ROI (Return on Investment) is undeniable. It’s better than the stock market. It’s better than real estate. It’s a guaranteed return.
The Rental Factor: A Gen X Business Move
There is another angle here for those of us who rent out our properties when we aren’t on the island.
The travel market has changed. We aren’t just hosting Boomers anymore; we’re hosting Millennials and older Gen Z travelers. I’ve seen the data—these demographics filter their Airbnb and Vrbo searches. They actively look for “eco-friendly” stays.
There is a distinct “guilt factor” for tourists running A/C in the tropics. They know it’s bad for the environment. If you can tell them, “Hey, crank the A/C, it’s powered by the sun,” you alleviate that guilt.
It becomes a unique selling proposition. Your property isn’t just a condo; it’s a sustainable condo. That distinction alone can be the tie-breaker that gets you the booking over the guy next door.
The Hunt for a Trustworthy Guide
Okay, so the “why” was easy. The “how” was the headache.
If you’ve done any construction in Mexico, you know the drill. You ask for a quote, you wait a week. You call again, and they say “mañana.” You get a price that seems to be based on the contractor’s mood rather than math.
I am a researcher by nature (and perhaps a bit of a control freak). I dove deep into the CFE regulations. I read forums. I annoyed people at dinner parties by asking for recommendations.
I heard the horror stories. Panels flying off roofs during tropical storms. Inverters are frying because they weren’t grounded properly. Installers are disappearing halfway through the job.
I needed an engineer, not a salesman.
After weeks of vetting, I landed on a local company called SolarSplit. The owner is Ricardo Domingo Pech.
Here were the green flags that popped up immediately:
He’s local. He lives here. He isn’t flying in from Cancun.
He’s an engineer. He has a massive solar array on his own roof. He eats his own cooking.
He didn’t try to sell me.
The “Less is More” Strategy
This was the moment I knew I had the right guy.
I called Ricardo, ready to buy a system that would cover 100% of my energy usage. I wanted the meter to hit zero.
Ricardo looked at my historical CFE bills—he insisted on seeing the history, not just one bill—and shook his head.
“I can sell you 100% coverage if you want,” he told me (I’m paraphrasing). “But it’s a bad investment.”
He explained the strategy: Tier Shaving.
Remember that subsidized rate I mentioned? The first few hundred kilowatts that cost pennies? It makes absolutely no financial sense to spend thousands of dollars on solar panels just to replace electricity that the government is practically giving you for free.
The goal isn’t to kill the bill entirely. The goal is to kill the expensive tiers.
You want a system that wipes out the DAC rates and the high-consumption overages, leaving you with just the cheap, subsidized baseline consumption.
He ran the numbers specifically for my home. He designed a system that would keep us safely out of the “penalty box” for an investment of around $3,000 USD.
I was braced to spend double or triple that.
He showed me the spreadsheet. Projected savings per billing cycle. Projected break-even point: 2 years and 1 month. After that, the equipment is paid for, and the savings go straight into our pockets.
The Installation: Hurricane-Proofing the Dream
Signing the check is the easy part. Watching someone drill holes in your roof is the hard part.
In Cozumel, we don’t just have rain; we have horizontal rain. We have wind that tears palm trees out of the ground. You cannot just bolt a solar panel to the roof with a standard bracket and hope for the best. If a panel comes loose in a Category 4 hurricane, it’s not a solar panel anymore—it’s a missile.
Ricardo’s team showed up on time (another miracle). They were surgical.
They didn’t just drill into the roof coating. They dug down to the structural concrete for every single footing. They used stainless-steel anchoring bolts—imperative in this salty air—and secured them with heavy-duty epoxy. Then, they sealed the entire footing with a secondary waterproofing compound.
I watched them work. They involved me in the decision about where the inverter would go (out of direct sunlight, protected from rain). They cabled everything neatly. It looked like industrial art.
For the first time in my history of owning a home in Mexico, I wasn’t pacing around nervously. I was actually enjoying the process.
The CFE Handshake
The final boss level is, of course, CFE. You can’t just hook up panels and spin the meter backward; that’s illegal. You need a bidirectional meter.
SolarSplit handled the bureaucracy. CFE sent an engineer out to inspect the work. They verified that the inverter would shut down automatically if the grid went down (this is crucial—you don’t want to be back-feeding power into the lines while a lineman is trying to fix a transformer down the street).
Inspection passed. Meter reprogrammed. We were live.
Living with the Sun
There is a psychological shift that happens when you open the monitoring app on your phone.
You see the curve of solar production spike at noon. You see the numbers ticking up. You realize that the air conditioner humming in the background is being powered by the very sun that’s heating up the patio outside. It feels like you’ve pulled off a magic trick.
We sleep better now. Literally, because we run the A/C at a crisp temperature without guilt. But also figuratively. The fear of the CFE bill is gone. We know roughly what it will be every time—low, predictable, and manageable.
The Verdict
If you live in Cozumel, or even just snowbird here for a few months a year, look at your bill. If you see “DAC,” you are bleeding money. Even if you aren’t in DAC yet, you are likely paying a premium for comfort you don’t need.
The technology is ready. The prices are low. The ROI is undeniable.
My advice? Don’t waste three months scrolling through Facebook groups and getting contradictory advice, as I did. Go to the source.
Reach out to Ricardo Pech at SolarSplit. Let him look at your receipts. He’ll tell you the truth about what you need—and more importantly, what you don’t need.
You can email him at ricardo@solarsplit.mx or reach him by cell at (987) 115-4526.
Life in Cozumel is supposed to be relaxing. Don’t let a piece of paper ruin the vibe.
