Power bourses asked to show supply-demand curve on websites

To ensure more transparency, sectoral watchdog CERC has asked power exchanges to display on their websites aggregate demand and supply curve of electricity trading for day-ahead market.
The move, according to the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), would help market players in making informed decisions.
Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) and Power Exchange India Ltd (PXIL) are the two electricity bourses in the country, with the former having more than 90 per cent market share.
"The proposal for display of aggregate demand and supply curve would be a positive step towards development of power markets.
"This would significantly contribute towards information dissemination, bring transparency in the markets and help market participants to take informed price decisions," CERC has said.

The directions would be applicable for day-ahead electricity trading market, starting from April 1 this year.

In the day-ahead market, participants transact electricity on 15-minutes block basis, a day before its delivery.
"The curves shall be available on the website for a period of one year from the date of publication. This shall be implemented for the results of day ahead auction held on 1.4.2014," the order said.
The watchdog, in its order on January 8, has asked the bourses to display on their respective websites the national level aggregate demand and supply curves -- price and quantity -- after completion of auction and final price discovery.

Noting that curves should be displayed for each 15 minute time block of the day, the regulator said exchanges should not display information about any individual participant.
As per the regulator, the demand and supply curve should be displayed at the same time when the final prices results for day ahead market are published on the website.
"This information shall be over and above the cleared prices of different bid areas presently being displayed for the day ahead markets," it added.
The power exchanges have also been asked to closely monitor the market and monitor the bidding behavior of participants to check whether any market abuse is happening.

In September last year, CERC had sought comments on a discussion paper titled 'Improvement of market efficiency by information dissemination through display of aggregate demand and supply day ahead curves by power exchanges on their website'.