introduction of sub-Hourly Market in Power exchanges and Facilitating large scale renewable energy integration in india

India has an electricity market design with multiple Power Exchanges in a single geographical area. The Power Exchanges commenced operations in 2008 with hourly bidding structure. In April, 2012, the hourly bidding format was changed to sub-hourly (15 minute) bidding format. The drivers of this transition include the need for coherence between Bidding and Scheduling Systems, Grid Integration of Renewables and Congestion Management. The collaborative effort of all the stakeholders in implementation of sub-hourly bidding and the impact of capacity building measures undertaken to ensure seamless transition to a sub-hourly electricity market in India has been discussed. The experience of sub-hourly market in India is presented with analysis on increased flexibility in bidding, smoothening of the price and volume variations along with interplay of Day-ahead prices in Power Exchanges and Real Time.

The vision 2022 of the Government of India has been set to achieve 175 GW of installed capacity of renewable energy sources. It includes 60 GW of Wind power and 100 GW of solar power comprising of 60 GW of ground mounted grid-connected solar power and 40 GW through roof-top grid interactive solar power. The regulatory framework has been provided by the Central Regulator i.e., Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) for Forecasting, Scheduling & Imbalance Handling for wind and solar at Inter-State Level. The paper also presents the experience of renewable integration in India in terms of the impact of renewables on deviations, forecasting, technical standards and protection requirements for renewables, qualified coordinating agency-aggregators, 24x7 market session and Renewable Energy Management Centre (REMC).