If you follow Indian storage tenders, you will have noticed they have stopped being events. There is no longer a big announcement followed by quiet; there is a steady flow, from state after state, month after month.
That change has a cause, and it is not enthusiasm for batteries. It is a rule that made capacity planning a statutory obligation instead of a good intention.
What resource adequacy means
Resource adequacy is about having enough capacity available when you need it, which is a different question from having enough energy across a year.
A state can be in annual energy surplus and still fail at seven in the evening in June. Annual averages hide the hours that actually matter. Resource adequacy planning is the discipline of looking at those hours specifically.
The obligation
The Central Government issued Guidelines for a Resource Adequacy Planning Framework for India in consultation with the CEA, under Rule 16 of the Electricity (Amendment) Rules, 2022, notified on 29 December 2022.
What it requires:
- Each distribution licensee must prepare a Resource Adequacy Plan over a ten-year horizon — a Long-term Distribution Licensee Resource Adequacy Plan.
- The plan is prepared on an annual rolling basis, taking account of already-contracted capacity and optimising what additional capacity is needed.
- Licensees must demonstrate to their state regulator 100 per cent capacity tie-up for the first year, and at least 90 per cent for the second, toward meeting their contribution to the national peak.
That last point is the substance of it. A planning target is something a utility aims at. A demonstrated tie-up requirement is something a utility must satisfy in front of its regulator. The difference shows up in procurement behaviour.
Why the answer keeps being storage
The framework explicitly requires that new generation capacity, energy storage and other flexible resources be assessed well in advance to reliably meet demand growth at optimal cost.
But the deeper reason storage keeps winning is arithmetic. When a distribution company runs the analysis, the gap is not spread evenly through the day — it is concentrated in the hours after sunset, when demand peaks and solar has stopped. That is the structural problem described in India’s evening peak storage gap.
Adding more solar does not fix a 7pm shortfall; it adds midday energy the system may already have too much of. Thermal capacity fixes it but is slow, capital-heavy and increasingly difficult to finance. Storage fixes it directly, at a tariff that has fallen sharply — see tolling agreements and capacity contracts.
This is why storage procurement shows up in state after state through the tenders we track on our tender tracker, and it links directly to the energy storage obligation trajectory that sits alongside it.
The national picture
CEA has published a Long-Term National Resource Adequacy Plan (LT-NRAP) covering 2026-27 to 2035-36, projecting national peak demand of about 458.7 GW by 2035-36.
That plan sits alongside the storage requirements in national planning — the 147 GWh by 2031-32 and 321 GWh by 2035-36 figures from generation adequacy analysis, and the longer-run targets covered in India’s 2032 storage target.
Resource adequacy planning is also being done utility by utility, with published plans for individual distribution companies. Those documents are among the more useful public sources for a developer trying to work out where the next tender will come from — they set out, licensee by licensee, exactly what capacity is missing and when.
What this means for you
- If you are a developer: read the resource adequacy plans for the states you target. They are public, they are specific about shortfalls by year, and they tell you where procurement must happen before the tender is announced.
- If you are a distribution licensee: the tie-up demonstration is the binding constraint, and storage is often the fastest resource to contract against an evening-hours gap. Peak shaving and grid stabilization describe the two functions most often needed.
- If you are a C&I buyer: this is the background to your own tariffs. Utilities facing capacity obligations and evening peaks price those hours accordingly, which is what makes time-of-day tariffs steeper — and behind-the-meter storage more valuable — over time.
- If you want to size the opportunity: our team can walk through the pipeline in a specific state with you, and the savings calculator covers the behind-the-meter case — get in touch.
Planning frameworks, tie-up requirements and published adequacy plans change by notification and are periodically revised, and state implementation varies. Treat this as an August 2026 snapshot and verify current requirements with CEA and the relevant state regulator.