62 consultation responses have pushed Portugal's 1,050 MVA storage auction back by a month
Applications were due to open on Monday. The environment and energy minister put the delay at three or four weeks, and used a visit to Abrantes to confirm that part of the grid capacity at the old Pego coal plant is going to a technology free zone.
Monday was meant to be the day applications opened for 1,050 megavolt-amperes of electricity grid connection capacity, reserved for projects that include storage. They did not open. Maria da Graça Carvalho, the minister for environment and energy, explained the hold-up during a visit to the Tagusvalley science and technology park in Abrantes, and put it at three or four weeks.
The reason is mundane, and in its way encouraging. Sixty-two submissions came in through the public consultation, each carrying several separate comments, and the government says it is working through them one by one.
Two tenders, not one
Of the total, 750 MVA is set aside for standalone storage installations. The other 300 MVA is reserved for renewable generation sites with co-located storage, and that procedure went through public consultation at the energy directorate DGEG after the government presented both at the end of June.
It helps to be clear about what is being auctioned, because it is not batteries. It is room on the grid. The scarce thing in Portugal is no longer sunshine, or wind, or even the money to buy cells. It is the injection point that lets the electricity reach whoever is going to use it. The national storage strategy wants 6.9 GW installed by 2030, and none of those gigawatts is worth anything stuck behind a full substation.
The Pego capacity that already has a home
The Abrantes trip produced a second piece of news. Part of the available capacity at Pego will be assigned to the technology free zone set up under the just transition process, after the coal plant shut in 2021.
The minister listed four things she called scarce, and which Abrantes happens to have all at once: grid access, water, industrial land, and engineering know-how. The mayor, Manuel Jorge Valamatos, said he was waiting on the tender with interest, and talked up the pulling power of the remaining capacity at the injection point for producers and consumers alike, data centres included.
The rest of Pego is moving slowly. Endesa, which won the 2022 just transition tender, expects to start building a roughly 600 MW hybrid renewable project in 2027, combining wind, solar and storage, at an estimated cost of 600 million euros. Asked about Fundo Ambiental support for the plant’s former workers, the minister said nobody would be left without it.
There is a clock here that nobody controls. The engineering knowledge built up around Pego is one of those scarce assets, and it walks out on its own if the former workforce retires or finds work elsewhere before the projects begin. A month’s delay on the auction does not change that much either way. Three years would, in the wrong direction.
By Beatriz Mota
Image: © European Union, 2026 / Claudio Centonze, European Commission Audiovisual Service (CC BY 4.0) · file photograph, February 2026
