The onset of monsoon and continuing congestion in the transmission corridor, especially towards the Southern States, set the pace for the Day-Ahead Spot Power Market in the month of July, 2014. With rainfall providing somewhat relief from the soaring temperatures, the spot power market saw slight decrease in demand in the month of July. With fuel (coal/gas) constraints affecting the thermal power plants, and lower rainfall reducing hydro generation as compared to last year, the supply of power on the exchange remained constrained. Consequently, an average of about 75 MUs of power was cleared on a daily basis in July - almost 14% lower than average daily volume in the month of June.

At 2319 MUs the total volume cleared in the month was almost 11% lesser than 2616 MUs cleared in the previous month. Further, the Open Access related restrictions in a few States partly contributed to lower quantum traded this month.

Almost 223 MUs were curtailed last month due to unavailability of inter-regional transmission corridor. The Southern States, particularly Tamil Nadu and Kerala, were the worst affected as power flow into the Southern region continued to be constrained.

The Market Clearing Price (MCP) saw wide variation from Rs. 3.0 per unit to Rs. 4.5 per unit. With average MCP at Rs. 3.76 per unit, the market remained an attractive option for buyers compared to previous month when the price was almost Rs. 3.9 per unit.

Prices:

With reduction in demand of electricity across States owing to the rains, area prices fell across all the Statesexcept in the Southern States where the prices instead increased by about 6-7%, largely due to unavailability of transmission corridor.

The average Area Clearing Price (ACP)  in North, North-East, East , West in July’14 were Rs. 3.35 per unit, Rs. 3.38 per unit, Rs. 3.35 per unit and Rs. 3.22 per unit respectively.The table below compares the average area prices in July vis-à-vis June’14

*MCP (Market Clearing Price) refers to the price discovered before accounting for congestion in the transmission corridor

*ACP (Area Clearing Price) refers to the bid area prices discovered after accounting for congestion in the transmission corridor

Volumes:

A total of around 2.3 BUs were traded in July’14 in the Spot Market on the Exchange. A few key highlights of the month were:

• Total buy bids – 3.7 BUs
• Total Sell bids - 2.9 BUs
• The Eastern States purchased 160 MUs, almost 44% less over previous month’s purchase
• Punjab bought 179 MUs, almost 30% less over the previous month.
• North-Eastern andSouthernStates alongwith the Punjab were the net buyers
• Northern, Eastern and the Western States were  net sellers of electricity.

The area-wise buy and sell volume trend in July vis-a-vis June is as represented below:

Congestion:

• The flow of power from Eastern to Southern States remained constrained 85.2% of time through the month.
• The flow of power from Western to Southern States remained constrained 90.2% time through the month.
• In Southern region, S1 (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka) – S2 (Tamil Nadu and Kerala) corridor was congested 26.3% of time through the month

Participation:

• On an average 770 participants traded in the power spot market in July on a daily basis.
• The highest participation was on 4 July, when 845 participants traded in the spot market.