The session on “Digital Energy Stack: Building a Secure and Interoperable Backbone for the Modern Grid” featured Dr Ram Sewak Sharma, Chairperson, India Energy Stack, Ministry of Power; Ashish Kumar Goel, Chairman, Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited; Prince Dhawan, IAS, Executive Director, REC Limited; N. Venu, MD and Chief Executive Officer, India and South Asia, Hitachi Energy, and MD, Hitachi India; and Indu Shekar Jha, Patron, CIGRE India, and Former Member, Central Electricity Regulatory Commission. The session was moderated by Reji Kumar Pillai, President, India Smart Grid Forum and Chairman, Global Smart Energy Federation. Edited excerpts…
Digital public infrastructure operates through standardised protocols, allowing disparate systems to connect without altering their internal operations. Applying this principle to the energy sector, the India Energy Stack (IES) aims to create a digital data exchange layer over existing, non-uniform systems. The initiative is not a centralised database or application, but a data fabric enabling secure data exchange and transactions. This would facilitate the integration of distributed energy resources, including small-scale solar systems, and support optimisation, fair pricing and the participation of producers, consumers and prosumers within a unified digital ecosystem.
With India moving towards over 500 GW of installed power capacity and a rising share of renewables, there is now a growing need for a strong digital layer to manage intermittency and ensure real-time visibility of grid operations. Grid operators must increasingly rely on digital tools to track and manage power flows dynamically, particularly as solar and wind generation expand.
Drawing on industry experience, integrating energy trading platforms with grid operations is key. While peer-to-peer and decentralised transactions are expected to grow, these must remain aligned with grid discipline, including frequency and voltage stability. There is a need for future-ready infrastructure, with all new equipment to be interoperable, scalable and aligned with emerging digital architectures. Siloed development across utilities and regions should be avoided, and a unified and standardised ecosystem to support the IES should be built.
The panellists stressed that standardisation is critical to ensuring the seamless integration of multiple stakeholders, technologies and services, thereby unlocking system-wide efficiencies. The IES is already enabling practical use cases, including peer-to-peer energy exchange across select discoms and consumer-centric applications built on access to granular meter data.
Empowering consumers with ownership and access to their energy data, in line with data protection principles, can drive innovation through third-party applications offering insights on consumption behaviour and optimisation.
From a financial perspective, there is a potential for new business models and value-added services, including alternatives to conventional net metering frameworks through peer-to-peer transactions. Such mechanisms could create additional revenue streams for utilities while offering greater choice to consumers.
The panellists observed that the sector is undergoing a fundamental shift from a centralised to a distributed architecture, with consumers evolving from passive recipients to active participants capable of generation, storage and demand response. In this context, the need to clearly define the future role of distribution companies was flagged, as their function may transition from electricity suppliers to service-oriented entities.
Grid operations will increasingly become data-driven, leveraging technologies such as internet of things, artificial intelligence and real-time analytics to manage variability and complexity. Such capabilities could significantly enhance renewable energy integration through automated responses such as storage despatch and demand-side management.
The panellists raised their concerns over increasing cybersecurity risks in an increasingly digital ecosystem and the need for strong institutional coordination across central and state agencies and digital readiness among utilities to prepare for such risks.
