The country’s first electricity power exchange — the Indian Energy Exchange Ltd (IEX) started functioning on Friday. IEX is an online national platform for spot trading of electricity that connects power-deficient consumers with power-surplus entities in the country. On June 9, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) gave green signal to IEX to start operations.

IEX is jointly promoted by Financial Technologies (India) Ltd and PTC India Ltd.

"The true spirit of the Electricity Act 2003 of creating a competitive power market has been initiated today through the IEX platform. Price discovery on the IEX physical market will provide a credible and secure reference price for other physical market trades in the power sector," said Jayant Deo, MD and CEO, IEX.

Besides Financial Technologies and PTC, the other key stakeholders in IEX include Adani Enterprises, IDFC Ltd, Lanco Infratech, Reliance Energy, Rural Electrification Corporation, and Tata Power. MCX will provide domain expertise in the operations of the exchange.

The exchange received bids for 13,176 Mwh of power when operation commenced and the transaction took place in the price range between Rs 6.46/kwh and Rs 8.01/kwh for the different hours of the market, the exchange said in a release.

Over 50 members and users from Maharashtra, Tripura, West Bengal, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh have participated in the trade on Friday, the release said. The exchange's key stakeholders include Adani Enterprises, Infrastructure Development Finance, Lanco Infratech, Reliance Energy and Tata Power Co.

"A transparent price mechanism would encourage power generation companies to add more capacity and attract new investments to meet India's growing power needs," said Jignesh Shah, chairman & MD, FTIL.

CERC instructed that any employee, including MD, CEO or Director, or any consultant, or advisor of the power exchange shall not be directly or indirectly associated with a holding or subsidiary company thereof. The power sector regulator also directed IEX to ensure that none of these officials are associated with any trading member or client or participant.

“The operation of power exchanges has become feasible due to transparent and non discriminatory inter-state open access regime implemented by CERC,” Mr Pramod Deo, Chairman, CERC, said at the launch of the exchange.

The main motive of IEX to provide an unbiased plateform to power companies in India .Through it the needful can get in touch with the supplier.