New Delhi: India's power utilities could soon be asked to publish everything from daily coal stocks to DISCOM-wise AT&C losses on a national portal — but the Ministry of Power's draft National Electricity Data Sharing Framework, 2026 leaves it entirely to them whether to sign up.
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The draft, which proposes creating national institutional structures to standardise and open up the country's electricity sector data, has been circulated to a wide set of stakeholders, including state governments, regulators, PSUs, DISCOMs, generators, industry bodies and research institutions, for comments. The ministry has sought comments within 30 days from the date of issue of the letter, ie, by July 21.
According to the draft, electricity sector data today is "presently fragmented, follows inconsistent formats, and lack a unified access and standardisation framework." It lists the key data issues as inconsistent metadata across agencies, different data definitions used by entities, no standardised classification of datasets, and limited visibility for regulators, policymakers and researchers.
While the framework proposes a structured mechanism for data sharing, it makes adoption optional for entities. "Adoption of this Framework, whether in full or in part, shall be entirely voluntary for the sectoral entities," the draft says.
However, two institutions are proposed to be set up regardless. "National Electricity Data Centre (NEDC) and the National Electricity Data Portal (NEDP) proposed as part of the Framework shall be established to create an ecosystem for data sharing across the country," it adds. The NEDP is envisaged as a national digital platform offering publicly accessible datasets in standardised, machine-readable formats.
The framework recommends an indicative list of more than 60 electricity sector datasets for publication in the public domain. These span generation, transmission, distribution, grid operations, renewable energy, tariff and schemes.
Among the datasets recommended for open publication are daily coal stock positions at thermal stations, unit-wise daily outage reports, plant load factors, state-wise and DISCOM-wise AT&C losses, DISCOM financial performance, including the ACS-ARR gap, day-ahead and real-time market clearing prices and volumes, SAIDI and SAIFI reliability indices, and state government subsidy to DISCOMs.
The draft prescribes a two-tier classification for shareable data. Tier 1 (public) covers datasets "that may be placed in the public domain without risk to operations, privacy, or national security," available on open access. Tier 2 (Access Controlled) covers datasets accessible only after a mandatory registration and KYC process, such as through PAN, CIN or DIN.
Access to Tier 2 datasets is to be provided through APIs, Secure Data Environments (SDEs), data dumps or other mechanisms, with the framework proposing deemed approval of registration applications within three days.
De-identified smart-meter interval data has been brought within the shareable universe. It appears as a Public dataset when aggregated at DISCOM, feeder or national level, and as Access Controlled when shared as unaggregated time-series, according to the classification matrix.
The draft requires data issuers to de-identify personally identifiable information before sharing, in line with the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023. It recognises seven techniques for the purpose — anonymisation, pseudonymisation, tokenisation, aggregation, value banding, spatial displacement and suppression.
The framework proposes that data issuers may set up Secure Data Environments allowing datasets to be accessed and analysed without being downloaded. "They may give preferential access to Indian AI developers/ startups," the draft says on such environments.
Certain categories of sensitive data have been kept out of the framework's ambit. "Sharing of sensitive information, including cyber defence protocols, real-time strategic telemetry, defence installation data, transmission corridor vulnerabilities, and power exchange bid data prior to market clearing, shall remain outside the scope of this framework," it states.
On the cost of implementation, the draft says utilities may develop their own portals or onboard onto the NEDP, and that Electricity Regulatory Commissions "should enable passthrough in Annual Revenue Requirement (ARR) after prudence checks."
The NEDC and all data issuers are required to comply with cybersecurity norms issued by MeitY, the Ministry of Power, NCIIPC and CERT-In, with vulnerability assessment and penetration testing mandated before any hosting infrastructure goes live.
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On timelines, the draft proposes that within 12 months of adoption, every data issuer publish a complete metadata catalogue of all datasets it holds, and within 18 months, ensure metadata for all public datasets is discoverable on the NEDC portal. Catalogues are to be updated at least once every six months, with new datasets classified within 90 working days of creation.
A two-level grievance redressal mechanism has also been proposed, with a Data Governance Officer at the first level and an officer one rank above at the appellate level, each to decide within 14 working days.
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