There is exactly one month left for the submission of bids for the AlmaSADI 700 MW BESS tender in Argentina, which is already generating unprecedented interest in the market, but investor appetite coexists with warning signs about its deadlines and execution.
From the private sector already They anticipated a potential flood of bids for up to four times the target capacity, suggesting a highly competitive bidding process. However, operational uncertainties still loom over the process.
“There will be more bids than expected; however, most distributors are slow with the processes, analyzing and understanding what the tender entails, beyond a few specific cases. So the bottleneck will be on that side,” assured a source close to Energía Estratégica , referring to the different levels of preparation for making the projects viable.
That is one of the market's main concerns today. Although CAMMESA extended the timeline—with bids scheduled for May 27 and the contract awarded on July 8—and the government plans to maintain January 2027 as the date for the start of commercial operations, the sector believes the timeline is still tight.
One of the most frequent criticisms concerns the original deadlines. “They were ridiculous,” is the general consensus among market participants, who felt that structuring storage projects, finalizing connection plans, and resolving engineering issues within that timeframe was insufficient. Therefore, although the recent extension was welcomed, doubts remain as to whether it will be enough.
Added to this tension is a deeper problem: interconnection, since the development of a BESS system can take between six and nine months, but the real bottleneck would be in the connection to the grid.
“For example, in the AlmaGBA tender, the interconnection deadlines were greatly extended, where in general the data is handled by the distributor and they are giving very long deadlines,” said representatives from the renewable energy industry in conversation with this news portal.
“While at AlmaSADI we will see how it goes, because there are distributors that are asking for projects to be connected to busbars, others that are asking for the line to be opened, and others that still have no idea how to connect,” they added.
The concern is even more relevant because AlmaSADI is not only being analyzed as a specific tender, but as a first test to incorporate stand-alone BESS systems at scale in different parts of Argentina, beyond what has been done in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA) with AlmaGBA.
New demand and need for power
The emergence of new demand, especially from the mining sector, reinforces this need. According to industry stakeholders, these large-scale energy consumers have commitments to incorporate new generation and power capacity, making the deployment of batteries at various nodes across the country strategic.
This background explains why, despite the doubts, the general perception of the tender remains positive. The market sees it as a competitive bidding process with the potential to attract strong participation, even in a context of rising investment costs.
However, the fundamental question remains: if the interest is guaranteed, are all the conditions in place for this boom in offers to translate into executable projects?
For now, the response seems nuanced. There is enthusiasm for the instrument, but also a shared warning: without greater alignment with distributors and without clearing interconnection bottlenecks, competitiveness alone may not be enough to ensure AlmaSADI's success.