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Capacity expansion modeling

Enhances✓ Available Now

What You Do Today

Run capacity expansion models to identify the least-cost portfolio of generation, storage, and demand-side resources that meets reliability, emissions, and policy requirements across planning scenarios.

AI That Applies

AI-powered optimization engines evaluate millions of possible resource combinations across scenarios, incorporating unit commitment, dispatch simulation, and reliability constraints.

Technologies

How It Works

For capacity expansion modeling, the system evaluate millions of possible resource combinations across scenarios. The processing layer applies the appropriate analytical models to the structured data, generating scored outputs that surface the most actionable insights. The results integrate into the practitioner's existing workflow — presenting recommendations, flags, or automated outputs alongside their normal working context.

What Changes

Planners can explore more scenarios and sensitivities as AI reduces model run times and enables broader optimization.

What Stays

Defining model inputs and assumptions, interpreting results, and making the critical judgment calls about which portfolios to recommend — models inform, humans decide.

What To Do Next

This section won't tell you what your numbers should be. It will show you how to find them yourself. Every instruction below produces a real, verifiable result in your organization. No benchmarks, no projections — just the steps to build your own evidence.

1

Establish Your Baseline

Know where you are before you move

Before adopting AI tools for capacity expansion modeling, understand your current state.

Map your current process: Document how capacity expansion modeling works today — who does what, how long it takes, where the bottlenecks are. You need this baseline to measure improvement.
Identify the judgment points: Defining model inputs and assumptions, interpreting results, and making the critical judgment calls about which portfolios to recommend — models inform, humans decide. These are the boundaries AI won't cross.
Assess your data readiness: AI tools for this area need data to work. Check whether your organization has the historical data, integrations, and data quality to support PLEXOS tools.

Without a baseline, you can't measure whether AI actually improved anything. You'll adopt tools without knowing if they're working.

2

Define Your Measures

What to track and how to calculate it

Time per cycle

How to calculate

Measure how long capacity expansion modeling takes end-to-end today, then after AI adoption.

Why it matters

The most visible improvement is speed. If AI doesn't save time, question whether it's adding value.

Quality of output

How to calculate

Track error rates, rework frequency, or stakeholder satisfaction scores before and after.

Why it matters

Speed without quality is just faster mistakes. Measure both.

When to check: Check after 30 days of consistent use, then quarterly.
The commitment: Give new tools at least 30 days before judging. The first week is always awkward.
What NOT to measure: Don't measure AI adoption rate as a KPI. Adoption follows value — if the tool helps, people use it.
3

Start These Conversations

Who to talk to and what to ask

your VP Operations or COO

What's our current scheduling lead time, and how often do we have to reschedule due to changes?

They're prioritizing which operational processes to automate

your process improvement or lean lead

Which scheduling constraints are genuinely fixed vs. which are we treating as fixed out of habit?

They understand the workflow dependencies that AI tools need to respect

4

Check Your Prerequisites

Confirm readiness before you invest

Check items as you confirm them.