The AlmaSADI storage tender reaches a decisive stage today with the opening of the financial bids. The call for proposals, launched by CAMMESA, includes 232 projects totaling between 7,272 MW and 8,230.5 MW , compared to an awardable volume of 700 MW plus an additional 10% margin .
According to Paulo Farina , former Undersecretary of Electric Energy of Argentina, this level of “surprising” competition should be directly reflected in economic values, so he anticipates that the bidding between developers, integrators and suppliers will allow them to easily exceed the maximum price set by the Energy Secretariat at USD 12,500/MW-month .
“There is no doubt that I expect better prices than the previous BESS tender (called AlmaGBA, in which 713 MW were awarded in August 2025). I think we should be around USD 10,000 per MW month, but that doesn't mean everyone will be below that amount. And being a bit optimistic, we should also find USD 100,000 per MW per year,” he stated in an interview with Energía Estratégica.
Market expectations are further supported by improved financing conditions. According to Farina, some companies are already securing funding at rates between 7% and 8% , a situation that alters the economic structure of projects and allows for more modest returns.
However, it should be clarified that the official award is scheduled for July 8 , but today's opening of envelope B will set the barometer for the Argentine energy storage market, particularly for a process that contemplates investments estimated at at least 700 million dollars .
However, even if the entire planned volume plus the tolerance margin were awarded, more than 7000 MW would still be left out of the initial contract.
This scenario already raises questions about the fate of projects that are not selected. One alternative is the Additional Reliability Reserve Service (Additional RRS) , created by Resolution 400 of the Secretariat of Energy, an instrument for which CAMMESA is already working on selection mechanisms to allow for future calls for proposals related to energy storage and other backup technologies.
The high number of bids also generates another debate within the sector: whether the competitiveness observed in AlmaSADI could lead to future contracts of a greater magnitude than originally planned.
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“We don’t want a situation where, because the supply is infinite, since there is financing and there were more than 8,300 MW of bids, only 3,500 MW are awarded, thinking that if it’s good individually, it will also be good as a whole. And I don’t know if that’s the case,” Farina warned.
"The risk is that too much will be awarded without any idea of how to lower the overall cost of the system. My big concern is that, seeing that it's competitive and necessary, we might become enamored with solutions that we don't know will lower our costs in the long run," he added.
The pending challenge of transmission
Beyond the bidding process, Farina argues that the implementation of energy storage should not replace the discussion on expanding the electricity transmission network. In his view, part of the current need to incorporate BESS (Bulk Energy Storage Systems) stems from limitations that the Argentine Interconnected System has faced for years.
“Argentina’s problem is that it takes a long time and is very disorganized, and it could have started much earlier with the issue of expanding the transport system,” he says.
This observation comes as major transmission projects announced by recent governments continue to be delayed. For example, the latest plan, presented in May 2025, includes 16 priority projects (several of which were also considered in previous programs) and more than 5,600 kilometers of 132 kV and 500 kV lines , intended to alleviate structural constraints in the grid.
The publication of the technical specifications for the AMBA I project was even expected during the first half of this year as a preliminary step to its bidding process, while other strategic initiatives were supposed to begin moving forward during 2027. However, the respective documents have not yet been released.
That's why the former undersecretary insists that the discussion should focus on the comprehensive optimization of the system: “ We should be discussing where to place new generation capacity, where to expand the transportation system, and where to place batteries. And it would have to be demonstrated that the sum of those three things lowers the cost. We need to start worrying about lowering the cost of the system.”
The underlying concern is to prevent storage from ending up functioning as a temporary solution in the face of a lack of network expansion.
“That decision is always being postponed, and now with the BESS we've found a miraculous solution that will allow us to postpone that decision for another five years. So, if we do that, it's a mistake,” he insisted.