Redefining Resource Adequacy Planning for India’s Power Distribution Sector

Planning Reliability in a Rapidly Changing Indian Power System

BSES Rajdhani Power Limited (BRPL) is one of the largest private power distribution utilities in India, responsible for delivering electricity reliably to over 3 million consumers, serving more than 12 million residents in the southern and western regions of Delhi. Operating in a system characterized by rapid demand growth, rising peak loads, and increasing penetration of variable renewable energy, BRPL must balance affordability, reliability, and regulatory compliance in an increasingly complex power market.

Against the backdrop of India’s accelerating energy transition and evolving resource adequacy requirements, BRPL recognized the need to move beyond traditional energy-balancing approaches toward a more forward-looking, risk-informed, and cost-optimal planning framework.

BRPL has become one of the first distribution companies (DISCOMs), in India, to begin moving beyond deterministic, compliance-driven power purchase planning toward a more risk-based, cost-optimal resource adequacy framework aligned with global best practices. By adopting Energy Exemplar’s PLEXOS® platform, BRPL translated India’s emerging resource adequacy mandate into an evolving planning process that provides visibility into investment trade-offs, emerging reliability risks, and long-term capacity planning considerations.

India's Resource Adequacy Mandate: From Obligation to Opportunity

While India’s 2023 resource adequacy mandate established compliance requirements, BRPL treated the framework as an opportunity to modernize long-term planning.

Rather than treating resource adequacy as a regulatory checkbox, BRPL chose to use the framework to fundamentally modernize its long-term power purchase planning, embedding cost optimization, reliability analysis, and uncertainty modeling into a single decision-making process.

From Compliance-Driven to Risk-Informed Planning

To execute this, BRPL partnered with Energy Exemplar’s PLEXOS® platform to initiate a comprehensive resource adequacy planning and assessment exercise, building on its initial CEA-led resource adeuqacy submissions and evolving toward a more detailed, renewable-focused planning framework.

The objective was clear:

• Establish a repeatable annual resouce adequacy process
• Identify a cost-optimal capacity mix over a 10-year horizon
• Quantify reliability and risk rather than relying on deterministic margins
• Translate modeling insights into actionable contracting and investment decisions
• Technical feasibility under Net Meter (Rooftop solar capacity installation), Group Net metering (GNM) and Virtual Net Metering

This marked a decisive shift from meeting regulatory requirements to actively shaping BRPL’s future portfolio strategy.

A Structured Two-Stage Resource Adequacy Framework

PLEXOS® provided BRPL with a unified platform to integrate long-term planning, operational realism, and reliability assessment into a single decision-making framework. This enabled them to move beyond deterministic planning approaches and evaluate resource adequacy through a cost-optimized, risk-informed lens.

Stage1: Cost-Optimal Resouce Adequacy Planning

This analysis, in PLEXOS®, enabled BRPL to evaluate alternative year-on-year capacity addition pathways over a 10-year planning horizon and identify cost-optimal directions under different scenarios.

The optimization simultaneously considered:

• Utilization of existing long-term contracts
• New procurement options, including solar, Energy Storage Systems (ESS), and hybrid resources
• Regulatory requirements such as Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO) and resource adequacy requirements 
• Practical operational constraints, including exposure to power market volatility during surplus renewable periods

The output was not a single static plan, but a set of scenario-based insights into year-by-year capacity pathways and contract structuring options, supporting informed evaluation of cost and reliability trade-offs.

Stage 2: Stochastic Resource Adequacy Assessment 

To test the robustness of the optimal plan, BRPL conducted Monte Carlo–based stochastic simulations, moving decisively beyond deterministic planning.

Each year was assessed through 90 sub-hourly simulations incorporating:

• Random forced outages of thermal units
• Multiple historical renewable and hydro generation profiles
• 15-minute demand variability

This step enhanced BRPL’s understanding of system risk, helping identify when and under what conditions supply shortfalls could occur, along with their potential magnitude.

Finally, scalable cloud computing and intuitive visualization tools ensured that complex analyses could be executed efficiently and translated into decision-ready insights, embedding resource adequacy as a repeatable and strategic planning process within the organization.

How Resource Adequacy Strengthened BRLP's Long-Term Planning

This initiative delivered tangible planning and strategic outcomes.

A Clear, Cost-Optimal Capacity Roadmap
BRPL evaluated alternative sequences of capacity additions across renewables, storage, and firm resources, minimizing long-term procurement costs while maintaining reliability.

Quantified Reliability and Risk Reduction
BRPL was able to assess probabilistic reliability indicators, including:

• Likelihood of supply shortfalls 
• Potential unserved energy
• Duration and timing of risk events

This shifted planning discussions from “meeting norms” to managing risk explicitly.

Improved Renewable Integration and Curtailment Insight
By modeling renewable variability alongside storage and flexibility options, BRPL gained clearer insight into how curtailment risks and renewable utilization challenges vary under different system conditions without over-contracting capacity.

Stronger Regulatory Confidence
Rather than retroactively checking compliance, BRPL can better anticipate where and when RPO and RA gaps may emerge, supporting more proactive planning responses.

Institutional Decision Support
Visualization and reporting through PLEXOS® Cloud allowed insights to be shared across planning, regulatory, and executive teams—embedding the process into routine decision-making.

Shaping the Future of Resource Adequacy Planning for Indian DISCOMs

Through its ongoing PLEXOS®-based Resource Adequacy Planning and Assessment journey, BRPL is emerging as one of the earliest Indian DISCOMs to operationalize data-driven, cost-optimal, and reliability-focused power planning.