The two national power exchanges — Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) and Power Exchange India Limited (PXIL)—started the Real-Time Electricity Market (RTM) on their platforms. RTM will help buyers buy electricity just an hour in advance. The RTM will hold 48 auction sessions on a day when power generators with surplus capacity will sell at any time during the day.
In December 2019, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) authorised the system for the trading of RTM power exchanges. Until now, exchanges had day-to-day, week-to-week, season-to-day markets and trading of renewable energy certificates.
In debut trading under RTM, the average price found on the IEX platform was Rs 1.8 per trading unit of 225 MW.
RTM is designed as a half-hour market, consisting of 48 15-minute auction sessions each. Auction sessions would be held over time blocks of the hour with delivery beginning one hour after the end of the business session, PXIL said in a statement.
IEX said that this trading model would benefit the most renewable energy generators. “With the fast-paced shift towards renewable energy, RTM will facilitate the distribution utilities to manage the challenge of intermittency associated with renewables,” it said in a statement.
The market should allow utilities and network operators to forecast and schedule renewable energy in an efficient manner. "With the launch of RTM, Indian energy markets are moving towards global electricity trading standards and establishing a new energy order in the country. It will help utilities to reduce the reliance of 20 billion units on the grid deviation system in the fiscal year 2020, "said Rajiv Srivastava, CEO & Managing Director of IEX Ltd.
PXIL stated that its platform also provides for generators that may have faced a forced outage to purchase power and fulfill their contractual obligations.
"RTM will be a game-changer in the electricity sector, for the first time enabling generators with long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) to participate in the vibrant electricity market of the country," said Prabhajit Kumar Sarkar, MD & CEO of PXIL.
