The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has issued the draft CERC (Power Market) (Second Amendment) Regulations, 2026.
Under the amendments, Grid Controller of India Limited has been designated as the market coupling operator and will be responsible for operation and management of market coupling through a separate dedicated cell. The proposed framework provides for market coupling in the day ahead market, real time market and other market segments from dates to be notified by the commission. It envisages a power market coupling procedure to govern bid handling, price discovery, scheduling and settlement. Bids collected by power exchanges would be validated, anonymised and transmitted to the market coupling operator, which would aggregate them for price discovery based on maximisation of economic surplus. The draft also provides for uniform market clearing price in an unconstrained system and market splitting in the event of transmission congestion.