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Grid, power sector and energy policy

The power sector: the grid and its transmission corridors, the regulators and distribution companies, market reforms, and what solar and wind change about running the grid. It serves GS3 answers on energy infrastructure.

Foundation note: The grid: how power reaches a plug, who regulates it, and what renewables change

Showing 1 of 6 articles, those that changed from 1 to 30 June 2026.Show all

Power exchanges and market coupling

Prelims and Mains

A power exchange is a platform where generators, distribution companies, traders and large consumers buy and sell electricity.

India has three exchanges regulated by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC); the Indian Energy Exchange holds over 80 per cent of the market, with the Power Exchange India Limited (PXIL) and the Hindustan Power Exchange (HPX) sharing the rest.
Each exchange sets prices from its own demand and supply; under the draft CERC (Power Market) (Second Amendment) Regulations, 2026, a Market Coupling Operator, the Grid Controller of India, would set clearing prices from aggregated anonymous bids across exchanges.
Under the CERC (Power Market) Regulations, 2021, a trader member may not hold more than 5 per cent equity in the exchange it trades on.

What changed

19 Jun 2026BriefOn 17 June CERC rejected HPX's plea for a three year exemption letting PTC India trade on it while diluting its stake. Mains: PTC India argues that once prices are discovered centrally, a trader can no longer influence exchange level price discovery, so the ownership cap loses its rationale. The Indian Express, 19 Jun 2026: Why India's largest power trader cannot trade electricity on the exchange it helped create (opens in a new tab)

Hybrid renewable energy project: A plant that generates from more than one renewable source, usually solar and wind, on one site and through one grid connection.

Curtailment: Deliberately cutting a plant's output below what it could generate, because the grid cannot carry or absorb the electricity.

Evacuate: In the power sector, to carry electricity away from where it is generated to where it is consumed.

Inverter based resource: A generator such as solar or wind that reaches the grid through power electronics, and so gives none of the rotating inertia that coal and hydro turbines do.

Power purchase agreement: A long term contract under which a buyer, usually a distribution company, agrees to take a project's electricity at an agreed price.

Reconductoring: Replacing old conductors that sag under heat with high temperature, low sag conductors, to carry more power on the same towers and rights of way.

Also filed elsewhere

India's data centre capacity · on Semiconductors, computing hardware and data centres
A data centre is counted in megawatts of IT load, because uninterrupted power is what it must be given and constant cooling is what that power becomes.