The Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission has released draft resource adequacy regulations for the state of Goa and the union territories (UTs) of Andaman and Nicobar, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep, and Puducherry.

The regulations aim to enable the implementation of the resource adequacy framework by outlining a mechanism for planning generation and transmission resources to reliably meet the projected demand in compliance with specified reliability standards.

The framework will cover demand assessment and forecasting, generation resource planning, procurement planning, and monitoring and compliance.

Distribution licensees must develop and prepare a Long-Term Distribution Resource Adequacy Plan (LT-DRAP), Medium-Term Distribution Resource Adequacy Plan (MT-DRAP), and Short-Term Distribution Resource Adequacy Plan (ST-DRAP) following the conditions under these regulations.

Long-term and Medium-term Demand Forecast

Distribution licensees must assess and forecast demand (MW) and energy (MWh) within their control area, including partial open access consumers. They must determine the load forecast for each consumer category for which the Commission has determined separate retail tariffs.

Distribution licensees must modify the load obtained on either side for each consumer category by considering the impact for each. The effect will be considered by developing trajectories for each activity based on the economic parameters, policies, historical data, and projections for the future.

The long and medium-term load profiles of the consumer categories for which load research has been conducted may be refined based on load research analysis. Distribution licensees must provide a detailed explanation for the refinement conducted.

Short-term Demand Forecast

Distribution licensees must develop a methodology for at least hourly or sub-hourly demand forecasting and maintain a historical database.

The state load dispatch center (SLDC) will aggregate demand forecasts by distribution licensees, considering the load diversity, congruency, and seasonal variation aspects for the aggregation of demand forecast. It will submit state-level aggregate demand forecasts (MW and MWh) in different time horizons.

Distribution licensees must also submit demand forecasts to the SLDC by April 30 each year.

Generation Resource Planning

Distribution licensees must map all their contracted existing, upcoming, and retiring resources to develop the existing resource map in MW for the long and medium-term.

Constraints such as penalties for unmet demand, forced outages, spinning reserve requirements, and system emission limits will be identified and listed.

Distribution licensees must compute capacity credit (CC) factors for their contracted generation resources by applying the net load-based approach. The process for CC factor determination must be undertaken each year, considering the past five years.

CC factors for hydro generation resources must be computed based on water availability with different CC factors for run-of-the-river hydropower projects and dam-based/storage-based hydropower projects.

Distribution licensees must analyze the sensitivity and probability to determine the most probable resource gap.

They must develop an LT-DRAP, MT-DRAP, and ST-DRAP based on the most probable scenario.

Based on the allocated share in the national peak provided in the Long-term National Resource Adequacy Plan (LT-NRAP) for the state, the STU or SLDC will allocate each distribution licensees’ share in the state or UT peak within 15 days of the publication of LT-NRAP-based on average of the percentage share coincident peak demand and the percentage share in the state or UT noncoincident peak demand.

The distribution licensee shall keep a minimum of 70% of the resource adequacy requirement (RAR) through long-term contracts, a minimum of 20% of RAR through medium-term agreements, and meet the remaining requirements through short-term contracts.

Distribution licensees must perform LT-DRAP, MT-DRAP, and ST-DRAP exercises by August 31 each year.

Power Procurement Planning

In their power procurement strategy, distribution licensees must identify an optimal procurement generation resource mix to enable smooth renewable energy integration in their power procurement resource options portfolio while meeting reliability standards.

Procurement must be consistent with the identified resource mix and consider the overall national electricity plan and policies notified by the appropriate government.

The power procurement from wind, solar photovoltaic, wind-solar hybrid, and round-the-clock generations must be carried out per the guidelines for a tariff-based competitive bidding process notified by the Ministry of Power.

While determining the modalities and tenure of the procurement of the resource mix, distribution licensees may ensure that available capacity within the state or UT must be optimized at the initial level.

They must demonstrate to the Commission a 100% tie-up for the first year and a minimum 90% tie-up for the second year to fulfill their contribution’s requirement towards meeting the state or UT peak.

Distribution licensees must factor in the possibility of short-term capacity sharing while preparing the resource adequacy plan optimally utilize the platform for inter-state capacity sharing or trading mechanism created by the Central Commission, and optimize the capacity costs. They must submit information about the contracted capacity to the SLDC and the STU for compliance verification.

Any new capacity arrangement or tie-up will be subject to the Commission’s prior approval, given the necessity and reasonableness of the cost of power purchase and the promotion of working efficiently, economically, and equitably.

Distribution licensees must submit the list of all existing power purchase agreements executed with different conventional power plants, RE generators, and the RAP.

Based on the LT-DRAP, MT-DRAP, and ST-DRAP, the STU and SLDC will communicate the state-aggregated capacity shortfall to the Commission by September 15 each year and advise the distribution licensees to commit to additional capacities.

SLDC will levy and collect non-compliance charges from the concerned distribution licensee for any shortfalls in resource adequacy compliance.

Distribution licensees must maintain and share all the demand assessment and forecasting data with the STU/SLDC, including but not limited to consumer data, historical demand data, weather data, demographics, etc.

They must also maintain all statistics and databases about policies and drivers, such as LED penetration, efficient fan penetration, appliance penetration, demand side management and energy efficiency measures, increased usage of electrical appliances for cooking, etc.

The Commission can occasionally issue and relax such directions and orders for implementing these regulations.

In consultation with the Central Electricity Authority, the Ministry of Power released a set of guidelines to establish an institutional mechanism for resource adequacy, spanning from the national level down to the distribution companies in 2023.

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