Author: PPD Team Date: 06/05/2025
The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has issued new rules to improve electricity trading in India. The changes aim to make prices clearer, reduce confusion, and encourage more participation.
The new rules apply to short-term power contracts: Term Ahead Market (TAM), Day-Ahead Contingency (DAC), Intra-Day, and Any-Day Single-Sided (ADSS).
In the TAM segment, power exchanges will stop offering custom time slots like hourly contracts within a week. Only fixed slots such as Base, Round-The-Clock (RTC), Peak, and Off-Peak will continue. These blocks require CERC approval after public consultation.
In the DAC segment, trades will no longer be matched one by one. Instead, an auction will clear all bids at a single price. This change is meant to reduce price manipulation. PXIL’s ‘Dynamic’ DAC contracts have been discontinued immediately.
Intra-Day contracts will follow a standard rule: power delivery should begin 2.5 hours after the trade is made. A new ‘Market Order’ option will be added to help buyers get fair pricing.
For ADSS contracts, clear timelines are now in place. Bids can be submitted up to 48 hours before delivery. Auctions need to finish within 2 hours, and acceptance should also happen within 48 hours. Buyers are required to disclose if they submit the same request on multiple platforms.
Exchanges will now display total bid volumes and number of bids for DAC and TAM trades to improve transparency.
These reforms address earlier issues like high prices, low activity, and overlapping contracts. In the ADSS segment, long delays had discouraged seller participation. The new timelines aim to attract serious bids and make trading more efficient.
Some DISCOMs asked for more flexibility in choosing TAM slots. However, CERC supported fixed time blocks to avoid market fragmentation. Renewable energy players backed Green TAM slots that align with their generation schedules.