Pending official award from CAMMESA, Solar DQD appears as one of the main winners of Argentina's "AlmaSADI" battery tender , as the simulation assigns it eight projects for 149.5 MW, equivalent to 23% of the tendered power.
The result surprised even the company itself, which during the opening of bids believed that it could hardly consolidate itself as the winning bidder due to the aggressive price level presented by several competitors.
"In the lead-up to the opening of the bids, we were confident. But when they started opening the bids and we saw prices below USD 8,000/MWmes, we were surprised and thought we wouldn't win almost any of them," said Federico Garín Odriozola , CEO of Solar DQD, during the "It Had to Be Said and It Was Said" streaming event hosted by Energía Estratégica .
"Even during the opening of the financial bids, we thought we would award one or two projects, no more, but when we saw that we awarded eight projects, it was a huge joy," he said.
The company had submitted 14 BESS projects totaling 302 MW and would eventually secure eight awards at an average price of USD 9547.50 MWmes in the province of Chaco , where the nodal impact for storage systems is considered very high.
"One part of the strategy was to integrate ourselves into the EPC as a generator. And to be able to bid in Chaco, which is a province we know very well, where we have solar assets. DQD Energy was created partly to take advantage of that entire structure. When we have available capacity within the construction company, we channel it into our own projects. It's just another internal client," Garín explained.
“EPC remains our core business. The power generation business plays a complementary role in supporting the growth of the entire organization. We don't feel there's a conflict of interest between being builders and developers/power generators; rather, we're playing a different game, since we don't compete with the major power generators,” he added.
It's worth noting that the call for bids received 235 projects totaling 8,335.9 MW , equivalent to 12 times the target capacity of 700 MW . In that context, DQD Energy emerged as the second largest recipient, behind Genneia.
Garín believes that this result confirms the interest that storage has generated in the Argentine market, while also understanding that the mechanism is unlikely to significantly increase the allocated volume and that, from now on, market development will increasingly depend on private initiatives.
Under this scenario, the Additional Reliability Reserve Service (SerCA) could become the main alternative to channel part of the more than 7000 MW that were left out of the initial allocation.
"We have a lot of work with AlmaSADI, but we are already evaluating some projects that could be made viable precisely through the SerCA scheme. We are paying close attention to how that regulation evolves," he said.
From AlmaSADI to regional expansion
The result also accelerates Solar DQD's internationalization strategy, so the company is already developing projects in Peru , closely following the upcoming 140 MW solar tender in Paraguay , maintaining activity in Uruguay and analyzing participation in the first storage auction that Brazil will hold.
"In batteries, we made a very strategic decision for internationalization. Having concrete experience in storage allows us to have a different perspective when we go abroad, since we can showcase real projects and our own experience," the company's CEO emphasized.
"We want to export all the experience we're gaining here. We're also looking at Brazil's upcoming BESS tender; we haven't decided to participate yet, but we're closely following everything that's happening in the region in order to export this storage-based development model," he added.
Why Brazil? The country recently confirmed the rules for its first national tender for stand-alone BESS systems, which will award 15-year contracts for projects of at least 30 MW , a market that Solar DQD is following closely.
The company's proposal, however, is not limited to batteries alone. "We're not just going to Brazil with batteries; we're going with the solar + storage combo, since it allows us to simultaneously solve generation and power needs in a very fast and efficient way," he explains.
Internationalization is further supported by the continued growth of the construction business. Solar DQD employs over 1,000 people , has more than 200 staff members , and is currently executing nine projects in different provinces, most of them between 10 and 30 MW .
In addition, the company has a pipeline of over 1,500 MW of solar projects that it expects to begin developing in the coming years. At the same time, DQD Energy continues to develop its own projects of between 10 and 20 MW , using these assets to strengthen its operational expertise in energy storage.
"We have a very interesting pipeline from both the construction and power generation sectors. We are very happy, but above all very busy to be able to respond to everything that's coming," he concluded.