India Issues New Guidelines to Promote Transparency in Cross Border Trade of Electricity

December 13: India has pro-actively issued the new guidelines on cross border trade of electricity in order to facilitate and promote cross border trade of electricity with greater transparency, consistency and predictability in regulatory approaches. Until now, the trade of electricity has mostly been taking place under Government-to-Government negotiations, which inherently take longer time.

Issuing a press statement, the Indian Embassy said that the guidelines specify the institutional framework and required processes to facilitate power trade.  It broadly specifies about the participating entities, and provisions have been made such that maximum entities get opportunity to trade electricity with India.  Under ease of doing business, India has simplified the process for all the Government owned companies of the neighboring countries.  But, this does not debar other companies / entities from participating in the trade of electricity.  The guidelines also facilitate determination of tariff for such trade of electricity.

The press statement also states that India has taken lead in promoting trade of electricity by neighboring countries through Indian Power Exchanges given that the power exchanges are not operational in the neighboring countries and they don’t have significant experience of trading power through the power exchanges.