Mint Explainer | What is peer-to-peer power trading? How will it help Indian power consumers?

NEW DELHI: India recently piloted peer-to-peer power trading that will enable consumers such as households, businesses and farmers who generate renewable energy to directly sell their surplus power to other consumers through digital protocols. Mint examines how digital public infrastructure under the India Energy Stack helps such transactions.Peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading refers to the direct trading of power between consumers. Once implemented, it will allow households and entities that produce solar power through rooftop installations to sell their excess generation to other consumers.

Consumers who produce and sell excess power are called prosumers.P2P trading of power will be done through a digital platform. A pilot project conducted during the India AI Impact Summit 2026 last week used a blockchain-enabled platform under the India Energy Stack (IES) framework. The mechanism of net metering helps in such transactions.

Net metering is a billing system for solar panel owners that credits them for excess electricity they generate and feed back into the utility grid.The India Energy Stack (IES) is a digital public infrastructure designed to empower citizens as active ‘energy agents’ rather than passive recipients of electricity. IES is a proposed interoperable digital framework that enables secure, low-cost data and service exchange across the power sector, similar to how UPI (unified payments interface) transformed India’s digital payments ecosystem.It is expected to be completed by June this year. The power ministry announced the launch of a task force to conceive the IES in June 2025.