New Delhi, As a first step towards the "greening" of the Indian short term power market, Power Minister R.K. Singh on Tuesday launched the pan-India Green Term Ahead Market (GTAM) in electricity.

"The introduction of GTAM platform would lessen the burden on RE-rich states and incentivise them to develop RE (renewable energy) capacity beyond their own RPO (renewable purchase obligations). This would promote RE merchant capacity addition and help in achieving RE capacity addition targets of the country," he said at the launch held via video conference.

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

The government's target of 175 GW RE capacity by 2022 is driving accelerated renewable penetration pan-India. Green Term Ahead Market 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 RPOs, and provide a platform to environmentally-conscious open access consumers and utilities to buy green power.

Transactions through the GTAM will be bilateral in nature with clear identification of corresponding buyers and sellers, and there will not be any difficulty in accounting for RPOs. The 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 with bids on a 15-minute time-block wise.

In the daily and weekly contracts, bidding will take place on MWh basis. Both buyers and sellers can submit the bid, however, the seller will provide a profile in terms of 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 and weekly contracts.

Moreover, energy scheduled through GTAM contracts shall be considered as deemed RPO compliance of the buyer.