Electricity trading platform Indian Energy Exchange Ltd. hopes to begin trading renewable energy contracts from early next year, a top company official said.
The IEX is an electronic system based power trading exchange regulated by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission and started its operations in June 2008 and currently has 4,500 producers on its platform.
“The green energy contracts will be traded as ‘green term ahead market contracts’”, the company said.
“We have filed a requirement with the CERC, which is currently looking at all the aspects to make sure that complete due diligence is done, all the provisions of the contract are correct and beneficial to power developers as well as consumers,” IEX managing director and Chief Executive Officer Rajiv Srivastava told PTI.
The CERC is currently hearing a petition filed by the IEX seeking approval for the introduction of GTAM (renewable energy) contract at the power exchange under the CERC (Power Market) Regulations, 2010, he said.
“CERC has solicited feedback from the industry as well as from own members. Once that is done, they will give us permission to launch the GTAM. We are ready with all the necessary technology and we are hopeful that we would be able to launch it early next fiscal,” Srivastava added.
The Modi government has set an ambitious target of achieving 175 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity by 2022. However, it has claimed that it can surpass the target and achieve 225 GW by 2022.
Explaining the importance of separate contracts for the renewable energy, Srivastava said, “over the period there has been a transformation in the favour of renewable energy. Also, the government has set an ambitious target for renewables. Therefore, there will be a lot of renewable energy available which can be made available to consumers at very affordable rates through our platform.”
When asked if the reluctance on the part of the renewable energy developers to set up new projects in the backdrop of the recent cancellation of power purchase agreements by states could impact its plans, he said, “the worry of the developers in not about consumption of the power generated, but the bankers who are not ready to fund the projects, unless there is a PPA signed.”
“If we keep that aside, generators will be more than willing to trade power as they will get better prices than they would in a PPA,” Srivastava added.
He further said that they are requesting bankers to not insist on 100 percent PPA with discoms for releasing funds for such projects.
“If that happens, we hope that the excess power will be traded on our platform. At present, we are only trading power from fossils, which is merely four per cent of the total capacity. Once we start this, our share will increase significantly,” he added.
Source: bloombergquint
