As a tool in combating greenhouse gas emissions, India is aggressively adding renewable energy resources to its electric system resource mix to displace fossil fuel and meet future electric load growth. Much of this is being accomplished using competitive procurement processes and private capital for investment needs. At the same time the country is also rapidly implementing wholesale competitive electric markets to improve the efficiency of the electric system.

Deploying Distributed Energy Resources (DER) in scale provides another key opportunity to improve electric system efficiency and combat emissions. DERs empower customers to modify their electricity usage and help reduce emissions, as well as offer reliability products to electric system operators. The promotion of DERs, however, requires action by utility regulators and policy makers. There is a real need to allow private sector participants to assist customers and bring private capital in implementing DERs. Applying advanced metering, while not mandatory, would also be very helpful to facilitate full utilization of DERs. Advanced metering and sophisticated tariffs would allow customers to react to granular wholesale granular price signals, help reduce distribution utility operating and capital costs, and improve efficiency and system reliability.

This paper will be the first in a series about the benefits of DER. The first part describes the benefits of deploying DER and advanced metering for customers and the electric system, discusses different business models that can be used, and recommends key actions regulators and policy makers must take.

Future papers will delve into more detail on the specific regulatory actions that would be required to:

• allow customers to participate in DER programs;
• motivate utilities to actively facilitate and promote DERs; and
• facilitate the entry of DER providers that would allow them to deploy their technical expertise and private capital in the space.