Brazil will incorporate battery storage into a transmission auction for the first time. The debut will be through a 100 MW/200 MWh system included in one of the 12 lots that ANEEL is preparing to auction on April 30, 2027 .
The BESS will be part of Lot 5 of Transmission Auction No. 01/2027 and will be used to reinforce the reliability of the power supply in the Cruzeiro do Sul and Feijó regions of Acre . The solution will have grid-forming capacity and will connect to the 69 kV sector of the Cruzeiro do Sul substation.
The project will also have a different contractual treatment than the rest of the facilities: the concession will be for 18 years due to the useful life of the batteries , compared to the 30 years planned for the other lots.
The new project is part of a much larger tender. ANEEL estimates an investment of R$12.9 billion , involving the construction of 3,245 kilometers of new lines and 1,386 MVA of transformation capacity across 13 states. The agency calculates that the works could generate approximately 29,500 direct and indirect jobs .
Before reaching the auction stage, the process will undergo a public consultation. Public Consultation No. 032/2026 will be open from September 10 to October 26 to receive comments on the first version of the tender documents.
Once the contributions have been analyzed, the document must go through the ANEEL Board of Directors again and, if approved, will be sent to the European Court of Auditors for evaluation in December.
The winning bidders will have between 36 and 60 months to complete the works, depending on the specific lot. In the case of the BESS project, the planned timeframe is 36 months .
The inclusion of energy storage sets this apart from traditional tenders in this segment. In this case, the batteries will not be considered an asset associated with a renewable energy plant, but rather infrastructure designed to perform a function directly linked to the transmission system .
This lot is complemented by other works planned for Acre. Lot 4 includes the 230 kV, 376 km Tucumã–Feijó lines, and the 255 km Feijó–Cruzeiro do Sul line, also at 230 kV.
More than 3200 kilometers of new lines and other strategic lots
Transmission Auction No. 01/2027 contemplates 12 lots distributed among Acre, Alagoas, Bahía, Ceará, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Pará, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo .
In addition to the new storage facilities, lots 6 and 7 will include substations with synchronous compensators and will be divided into sub-lots. A cross-bidding methodology will be used for awarding the contracts, allowing the total price of each lot to be compared with the sum of the lowest bids submitted individually for its components.
Lots 9 and 12, meanwhile, are geared towards serving high energy consumption loads in the Northeast under the National Policy for Access to the Transmission System.
The continuation of batch 12 will still depend on confirmation of the number of accesses before November 16.
The final inclusion of Lot 11 , associated with the future electrical interconnection between Brazil and Bolivia, is also still pending. The planned facilities include a ±420 MW bidirectional converter station, as well as transmission infrastructure between the two countries.
Its final incorporation will depend on the definition of the corresponding facilities and the requirements associated with the international agreement.
With this package, Brazil is not only preparing a new expansion of its high-voltage infrastructure, but is also incorporating storage as a new tool within transmission planning .
The Acre BESS will be the first step: 100 MW / 200 MWh of grid-forming batteries that, if the process maintains its schedule, will be put out to tender along with the rest of the assets on April 30, 2027.