Soon to open Settlement Account with ICICI Bank
By CL Jose
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM/August 24-2022: KSEBL, the sole generator and distributor of power in Kerala, is all set to enrol as a member on Hindustan Power Exchange (HPX), the newest power exchange in the country.
A statement issued by the state-owned power distributor recently said that KSEBL has been accorded sanction for taking membership in HPX and in order to facilitate the operations, the company is opening a specialised account, Settlement Bank Account, with the Mumbai branch of ICICI Bank.
HPX, the third power exchange in India’s fast growing electricity market, is promoted by Power Trading Corporation of India (PTC) and BSE Investment with 25 per cent stake each, and ICICI Bank at 9.9 per cent.
Other shareholders are Greenko Energies (5 per cent), Jindal Power (2 per cent), Meenakshi Power (5 per cent) and six others. HPX received a nod from the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) towards June end, 2022.
Though HPX was floated as early as in 2019, it was launched as an exchange, ready to be operational, only in the first week of July.
The other two exchanges in the country are Power Exchange of India (PXIL) and Indian Energy Exchange (IEX), which alone controls more than 95 per cent of the total power traded in the country.
For more than two decades, about 90 per cent of country’s electricity had been traded through bilateral contracts between the power generating companies and the state utilities like KSEBL.
The absence of trading platforms for power until about 20 years ago, had denied the power sector the much-needed flexibility and hence the scope for building a vibrant market that would have helped the players take advantage of market conditions.
Recently, the former chairman of KSEBL, Dr B Ashok, had said that the company could earn a sizeable amount from trading of surplus power (at a given time), and this has helped KSEBL strengthen its bottom line during the current financial year (FY23) after having posted losses year after year.
