Power trading triples in 3 yrs: K C Venugopal

NEW DELHI: Volume of power trading in the country tripled to 10.25 billion units during 2008-09 and 2010-11. About 3.31 billion units of electricity was traded during 2008-09, minister of state for power K C Venugopal informed Rajya Sabha on Monday.

Power trading in the country is undertaken through traders, power exchanges and directly between distribution companies.

Central Electricity Regulatory Commission has granted licenses to 44 entities and permitted power exchanges for trading in electricity. Traders had started operations in 2004-05. Power exchanges India Energy Exchange commenced operations in June 2008 and Power Exchange of India began trading in October, 2008.

“Short term trading leads to optimal utilisation of generating resources. Several steps have been taken by the regulatory commissions to facilitate short-term power trading,” Venugopal said.

He said even open access consumers were accessing short-term trading market to procure power.