Ramaseshan in Calcutta on Saturday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta, Sept. 13: The country’s second power trading exchange, promoted by National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) and National Stock Exchange (NSE) Ltd, will go live from the first week of next month.

“We have got the approval of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission,” said NCDEX managing director and chief executive officer R. Ramaseshan.

NCDEX and the NSE hold equal stakes in Power Exchange of India Ltd, a company recently floated to run the power exchange where electricity will be traded on hourly basis for the day-ahead and in units of megawatts (MW).

“The management team of the company has also been formed and we are now working on the software systems,” Ramaseshan said.

The country’s current installed capacity of electricity generation is 1.43 lakh megawatt. Depending on the fluctuations, the average generation per day varies between 1,00,000MW and 1,12,000MW. Eight to ten per cent of this is generally available for free trading, according to Unopam Kaushik, chief business officer at NCDEX.

India Energy Exchange (IEE), the country’s first power exchange, started trading from June 27 this year. IEE is promoted by Financial Technologies Ltd — the promoter of Multi Commodity Exchange and Power Trading Corporation India. Other shareholders in IEE include Adani Power, IDFC, Lanco Infrastructure, Reliance Energy, Rural Electrification Corporation and Tata Power.

Last month, NTPC, NHPC, Power Finance Corporation and TCS signed a joint venture agreement to set up the country’s third exchange to trade in electricity futures.