India will begin market coupling of power exchanges in January
India's electricity regulator announced on Wednesday that it would begin to implement market coupling for electricity trading in phases from January.
Market coupling is a model of economics used on energy markets in order to create a uniform, single price for electricity across multiple trading platforms.
The regulator is taking this action to improve price discovery and the efficiency of the system.
In an order, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission said that all power exchanges' day-ahead markets will be linked using a single system.
In the new system the power exchanges will alternately act as the market coupling operators. Grid-India is to act as an audit and backup operator.
CERC stated that it would look at coupling real-time markets with other segments, such as the term-ahead segment, in a future stage after further pilot runs and consultations.
The regulator has directed all power exchanges to share data with Grid-India, and the CERC in order to support the rollout.
The CERC stated that it would issue additional orders depending on the progress made in implementation.
The Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) is currently the most important platform in India for determining electricity spot prices.
Nevertheless, the market coupling will allow other power exchanges to also be market couplers.
Analysts believe this will reduce the IEX’s dominance and impact its market share. Sethuraman N.R., Maju Samuel (Reporting)
(source: Reuters)
