Corporate Communications

The Economic Times

NSE launches monthly electricity futures; trade crosses 4,000 contracts

NSE’s electricity futures debut sees robust participation and ₹87 crore turnover, offering a risk-managed platform for power market stakeholders to hedge and plan effectively.

The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) on Monday launched the electricity futures, with contracts recording more than 4,000 lots as of 2 pm. These lots represent more than 200 million units of electricity with the total turnover of trade crossing Rs 87 crore mark.

The volume-weighted average price recorded around this time stood at Rs 4,368/MWh.

The first trade opened at Rs 4,430/MWh, and as of the reporting time, the price was trending around Rs 4,364/MWh, reflecting healthy participation across participants including power generators, discoms, large industrial consumers, and market intermediaries.

"This launch provides a transparent, risk-managed platform for participants to hedge electricity price volatility, support long-term power planning, and contribute to India’s broader energy transition goals," an NSE release said.

NSE received approval from the capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to launch monthly electricity futures contracts on June 11. The move came with a view to deepen India’s power markets and support long-term structural reforms initiated under the Electricity Act, 2003.

"India’s journey toward achieving its net-zero emissions target demands substantial investment—estimated at over $250 billion year on year till 2047 as per Niti Aayog report. By 2030, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are expected to contribute over 50% of the nation’s installed power capacity. A robust and dynamic electricity derivatives market is essential to attract this scale of climate finance from both domestic and global investors," the June release said.

Through the launch of monthly electricity futures, the NSE aims to achieve 3 things -- one is to provide market participants with effective hedging tools against electricity price volatility. The second objective is to enable more accurate price signals in the power sector while the third reason is to encourage capital investments across the electricity value chain—generation, transmission, distribution, and retail.

View Details