Energy

Real-time power market to go live today, delivery at midnight

Updated : May 31, 2020 01:55 PM IST

The real time market (RTM) for power will go live on Sunday night with electricity delivery at midnight, an Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) official said.

The RTM enables consumers, including distribution companies (discoms) and captive users, to buy power on exchanges just an hour before delivery.

"IEX is all set to launch RTM today evening. The first RTM trading session will be held at 10.45 PM on 31 May 2020 with delivery at 0000 Hrs on 1 June 2020 (Sunday midnight)," Shruti Bhatia, Head - Corporate Communications and CSR of IEX, told PTI.

She said the market will feature 48 auction windows of half-an-hour each during the day, with delivery of power within one hour of trading (session close).

Currently, consumers, including discoms and captive users, can buy power a day prior in the Day Ahead Market (DAM) on the power exchanges where trading is done for two hours daily from 10 am to 12 noon.

The main purpose of introducing a real time power market is to deal with renewables interference and better portfolio management by power generation companies (gencos), discoms and other consumers.

With more and more renewable energy capacity being added to power grids, there would be need for sudden ramp-up and downsizing of supply.

Consumers can plan their energy supplies in a better way and gencos would be able to increase or decrease their output accordingly using the RTM facility.

RTM will optimise generation resources and facilitate generators and discoms to sell surplus power efficiently with next day payment cycle, Bhatia added.

Apart from IEX, Power Exchange of India Ltd (PXIL) has also planned to launch RTM on its platform from June 1.

At present there are two power exchanges in India -- IEX and PXIL.

The commencement of the new market segment is in line with power regulator CERC's commitment to deepen the power market and offer new and innovative products to further the efficiency and savings for the market participants, Bhatia added.

Earlier in March, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) had decided to defer the implementation of real time power market till June 1 amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Initially, RTM was scheduled to start from April 1 this year. The government had imposed the coronavirus lockdown from March 25.

Real-time power market to go live today, delivery at midnight

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