Centre launches Green Term Ahead Market for renewable energy sector

Union Power Minister R K Singh launched a pan-India Green Term Ahead Market (GTAM) in electricity through video conference on Tuesday as a first step towards greening the Indian short term power market

The introduction of the GTAM platform would lessen the burden on renewable energy (RE)-rich States and incentivize them to develop RE capacity beyond their own Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO), Singh said. "This would promote RE merchant capacity addition and help in achieving RE capacity addition targets of the country.”

He further added that the GTAM platform will lead to an increase in the number of participants in the renewable energy sector. It will benefit buyers of RE through competitive prices and transparent and flexible procurement. It will also benefit RE sellers by providing access to the pan-India market.

The Modi government has laid out an ambitious target of 175 GW RE Capacity by 2022 and GTAM contracts will allow additional avenues to the RE generators for sale of renewable energy; enable obligated entities to procure renewable power at competitive prices to meet their RPO; provide a platform to environmentally conscious open access consumers and utilities to buy green power, the Power Ministry said.

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Key features of GTAM:

Transactions through GTAM will be bilateral in nature with clear identification of corresponding buyers and sellers, there will not be any difficulty in accounting for RPO.

• GTAM contracts will be segregated into Solar RPO and non-Solar RPO as RPO targets are also segregated;
• Further, within the two segments, GTAM contracts will have Green Intraday, Day Ahead Contingency, Daily and Weekly Contracts;
• Green Intraday Contract and Day Ahead Contingency Contract – Bidding will take place on a 15-minute time-block wise MW basis.
• Daily and weekly contracts – Bidding will take place on an MWh basis. Both buyers and sellers can submit the bid, however, the seller will provide a profile in terms of a 15-minute time block-wise quantity (MW) along with the price (Rs/MWh). After the contract gets executed scheduling will take place as per the profile. In case of multiple buyers, the profile will get allocated on a pro-rata basis;
• Price discovery will take place on a continuous basis i.e. price-time priority basis. Subsequently, looking at the market conditions open auction can be introduced for daily & weekly contracts;
• Energy scheduled through the GTAM contract shall be considered as deemed RPO compliance of the buyer.

R K Singh also mentioned that other products to be introduced in the power market for the promotion of renewable energy are in the pipeline and would be introduced soon.

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