India Energy Stack: A Vision Ahead of its Infrastructure

Introduction

On 27 June 2025, the Ministry of Power (MoP), Government of India, constituted a high-level Task Force to developing the roadmap for India Energy Stack (IES) with proof of concept for Utility Intelligence Platform—a foundational digital infrastructure aimed at transforming the energy sector by enabling seamless data exchange, open digital interfaces, smart contract frameworks, and interoperable registries. Modeled on the success of the India Stack in digital governance, the India Energy Stack envisions a future where data-driven platforms facilitate open access, demand-side participation, and service innovation across the electricity value chain. However, while the vision is forward-looking, its current applicability remains severely constrained. This paper examines the practical limitations of the India Energy Stack in addressing present-day challenges in the Indian power sector, especially in the absence of foundational digital infrastructure like smart meters, AMI, and real-time system visibility.

Jurisdictional Complexity

Electricity, unlike digital identity or payments, falls under the Concurrent List of the Constitution, meaning it is governed jointly by both the Centre and the States. This shared jurisdiction introduces significant complexity in implementing nationwide reforms like the India Energy Stack (IES). While Aadhaar and UPI were centrally designed and uniformly adopted across India, the power sector operates within a fragmented policy and regulatory landscape. States follow divergent approaches to tariff structures, subsidy delivery, data management, and IT infrastructure, making standardization and interoperability a formidable challenge. Additionally, without clear regulatory mandates or compelling financial incentives, several states may be reluctant to align with a centrally designed digital platform, thereby undermining the very objective of creating a unified, interoperable digital backbone for the power sector.

Energy Poverty and Infrastructure Gaps

India continues to face persistent energy access challenges, including frequent outages, low per capita electricity consumption, and inadequate last-mile infrastructure, particularly in rural and underserved regions. In this context, the push for a highly digitized ecosystem through the India Energy Stack (IES) risks being misplaced. The initiative presupposes a level of grid reliability, infrastructure readiness, and quality of service that is simply not present in many parts of the country. Digitalization without first ensuring universal, stable, and affordable electrification risks widening the gap between aspirational policy and on-ground realities

IES and the Energy Footprint of Digitalization

While the India Energy Stack aims to accelerate decarbonization through digital intelligence, it is important to recognize that digital infrastructure itself has a significant energy footprint. Data centers, smart sensors, communication networks, and cloud-based platforms all consume electricity, often continuously and at scale. This creates an inherent irony—energy is being used to digitize the energy sector. Unless this additional demand is consciously met through renewable sources, the very process of digitalization may end up increasing fossil fuel consumption and undermining the broader decarbonization objectives it seeks to

Absence of Global Standards

Unlike the fintech or identity domains where India could draw upon or adapt from global models, the India Energy Stack (IES) has no established international precedent to follow. There is currently no proven digital public infrastructure framework globally that spans the entire electricity value chain. This lack of precedent makes the task inherently experimental and risk-prone. Compounding this challenge is the absence of universally accepted standards for interoperability—whether in smart meters, distributed energy resource (DER) integration, or consumer data access protocols. Without such benchmarks, achieving seamless coordination across diverse utilities, platforms, and stakeholders becomes exceedingly difficult.

High Cost of Digitalization

The digital infrastructure envisioned under the India Energy Stack—including smart meters, edge devices, communication networks, and cloud platforms—entails substantial capital and operational expenditure. However, there is currently no clear financing strategy to support this scale of investment. In the economics of the power sector, costs are ultimately passed on to ratepayers, meaning that financially stressed DISCOMs and end consumers will bear the burden. Without assured funding mechanisms or demonstrable returns in service quality, this could lead to resistance from both utilities and the public, undermining the long-term viability of the initiative.

Weak Legal and Regulatory Framework

A critical gap in the India Energy Stack initiative is the absence of an enabling legal framework. Unlike UIDAI and NPCI, which operate under specific Acts of Parliament, IES lacks any statutory backing to define essential elements such as data governance, consumer rights, cybersecurity safeguards, and system interoperability. This legal vacuum creates uncertainty around accountability and compliance. Moreover, there is no obligation for states to participate—adoption remains entirely voluntary, with no incentives or penalties to drive uniform implementation. Perhaps most fundamentally, the question of data ownership remains unresolved: it is unclear whether consumer usage data belongs to DISCOMs, individual consumers, regulators, or authorized third-party service providers. This ambiguity poses serious risks to consumer privacy, regulatory oversight, and investor confidence.

Misalignment with Current Sector Challenges
Several basic problems in India’s power sector cannot be fixed by the India Energy Stack (IES) alone. For example, IES is not meant to increase domestic fuel production or reduce reliance on energy imports, so it does not improve energy security. It can support tools like targeted subsidies and dynamic tariffs, but by itself, it cannot make electricity more affordable or ensure that all people have access. Similarly, financial losses of DISCOMs—especially due to AT&C (Aggregate Technical and Commercial) losses—cannot be solved just by digital platforms. Without widespread smart meters and upgrades to physical infrastructure, issues like faulty billing and power theft will continue.

IES also does not deal with the root causes of high electricity tariffs, such as heavy cross-subsidies and outdated long-term power contracts. Also, while IES can help the energy transition by providing better data and system visibility, its role is supportive, not game changing. It can enable improvements but cannot replace the broader reforms needed in policy, finance, and governance.

India Energy Stack Without Smart Grids and Smart Meters: A Fundamental Contradiction

The India Energy Stack (IES) envisions a digitally empowered power ecosystem, but its success critically hinges on the presence of smart grid infrastructure—particularly smart meters and real-time data systems. Yet, India's current smart meter penetration stands at just 10–12% even with government backed RDSS scheme in operation for more than 4 years, and much of the distribution grid remains "dumb," with limited automation or observability. It is somewhat ironic that the IES Task Force is being funded under the RDSS scheme, and most of its government -members have long been engaged in efforts to address the very power sector challenges that continue to persist.  Core functionalities of IES such as e-KYC-based energy access, demand aggregation, dynamic tariffing, and service layering depend heavily on advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to provide granular consumption visibility, real-time grid data for trusted transaction settlement, and digitally linked consumer registries. In the absence of these foundational elements, the India Energy Stack remains a conceptual architecture—ambitious in scope but lacking the operational backbone needed for practical utility or meaningful implementation.

The Illusion of Data Digitization without full Data

There is a growing narrative around leveraging the India Energy Stack (IES) to enable data digitization of energy transactions. However, this vision stands on a weak foundation given the current state of data availability and infrastructure in India’s power sector. The country lacks reliable and granular consumer-level data due to low smart meter penetration and outdated billing systems. There are no common data standards across DISCOMs, leading to fragmented and non-interoperable datasets. Additionally, there is no clear digital ownership or governance framework defining who controls or benefits from consumer energy data. Most fundamentally, the physical metering infrastructure required to generate trustworthy and real-time data is either absent or inadequate.

Unrealistic Expectations Without Foundational Reforms
The India Energy Stack is positioned as a transformative digital layer for the power sector, aiming to streamline operations, empower consumers, and unlock new market efficiencies. However, without critical enablers such as universal smart metering, feeder and substation automation, and robust consumer data protection laws coupled with standardized energy identities, the Stack risks serving a limited set of stakeholders. In its current form, it may primarily benefit platform developers and data intermediaries more than the actual needs of consumers or DISCOMs. Without a solid physical and legal foundation, IES could inadvertently reinforce digital divides rather than reduce them.

The India Energy Stack is positioned as a transformative digital layer for the power sector, aiming to streamline operations, empower consumers, and unlock new market efficiencies. However, without critical enablers such as universal smart metering, feeder and substation automation, and robust consumer data protection laws coupled with standardized energy identities, the Stack risks becoming an elite abstraction. In its current form, it may cater more to platform developers and data intermediaries than to the actual needs of consumers or DISCOMs. Without a solid physical and legal foundation, the IES could widen existing digital and service inequities rather than resolve them.

Conclusion

The India Energy Stack is a promising initiative inspired by the success of India Stack in digital identity and financial inclusion. It holds potential to enable future innovations in energy services, demand aggregation, and active prosumer participation. However, in the current landscape—characterized by weak digital infrastructure, inconsistent data governance, and unresolved structural inefficiencies in the power sector—its practical utility remains limited. Without foundational elements such as widespread smart metering, robust data acquisition systems, and a coherent regulatory framework, the envisioned benefits of IES will remain largely aspirational.

Summary:

India Energy Stack is not irrelevant—but it is premature, given the absence of the very data and digital infrastructure it is designed to leverage.