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India Energy Stack (IES) is a common set of specifications for sharing data across the power sector. It works the way UPI works for banking — UPI holds no money of its own; money stays in the customer's bank, and UPI is only the shared rules that let any bank pay any other. IES is the same idea, for energy data. The data stays in the systems that already hold it, and IES specs let any two systems exchange and act on it directly.
IES is live. Four pilot DISCOMs built their adapter and demonstrated DER Visibility, Consumer Energy Passport, Consumer Meter Digest and Smart Meter Data Exchange in the 30-day Challenge (21 May – 21 June 2026).
📄 Printable version: download this entire guide as a single PDF — ies-report.pdf. Regenerated automatically whenever the docs change.
How IES works — three steps
Every IES interaction follows the same three steps. They are the spine of this entire GitBook.
Every participant gets a verifiable digital identity and is listed in a shared directory. Done once.
Before every exchange, both systems look each other up, confirm the other is genuine, and agree on what will be exchanged and on what terms. No bilateral arrangement is needed.
Data moves using agreed field names and structure, following the public standard for that domain. Where the use case needs a durable record, a verifiable credential is issued that the holder keeps.
DLMS/COSEM, IEEE 2030.5, OpenADR; W3C VCs
IES picks the right open standard for each step and publishes a specification on top. IES does not write new standards. Build to the IES specs once, and a system can connect to any other IES-ready system without fresh integration work.
Two capabilities build on the shared identity foundation: data exchange — B2B exchange of structured datasets, for which IES recommends the Beckn protocol — and energy credentials — W3C Verifiable Credentials issued with OpenCred, verified against the issuer's published key, and delivered to consumers over DigiLocker, web portals or any channel the issuer already runs. Credentials do not require a Beckn network.
How this guide is organised
Three top-level sections, each organised by the Register / Discover / Exchange spine.
The specifications. What is published.
The intro, on one page. Problem, UPI analogy, what IES is and is not, sector impact, the four pilots, FAQ.
Verifiable digital identity (W3C DIDs) and the shared directory (DeDi). Detail under: Identifiers, Registries.
Beckn-protocol interaction for data exchange. Detail under: Data Exchange.
The Taxonomy and verifiable credentials. Detail under: Energy Credentials, Taxonomy.
The master vocabulary of IES — every domain object, its plain-language overview, and the schema that describes its shape; standards precedence, versioning, proposal flow.
The action guides. What you do.
What you can ship, organised per the IES Documentation Template so once you've read one, you know where to look in any other.
Live in pilot
Live or staged
In progress
Where to start
New to IES? Read What IES Is — five minutes.
Decision-maker / reviewer? Skim What IES Provides in order: What IES Is → Register → Discover → Exchange.
DISCOM / regulator / vendor onboarding? Go straight to How you implement IES — the same four steps the pilot DISCOMs followed in 30 days.
Picking a first use case? Browse the table in Use Case Implementation Guides — pilot cases at the top.
Need a term defined? Always-visible Glossary.
Why IES?
The Indian power sector has spent heavily on digital tools but not on a common way for those tools to work together. A single DISCOM often runs several metering systems supplied by different firms and spends years making them work together because none was built to a common standard. The same effort is repeated across the country.
IES is the shared digital infrastructure that ends that duplication — open specifications, verifiable data, interoperable protocols. The data stays where it is; the way it is described and requested becomes common.
For the longer answer, read What IES Is.
Key standards and protocols
The Register layer — cryptographic identity for issuers, holders, verifiers, assets and datasets
The Discover layer — peer-to-peer discovery, contracting, consent, audit
The durable-record half of Exchange — signed, machine-verifiable credentials
The meter-data half of Exchange — smart-meter wire protocol used in RDSS AMI deployments
The asset-data-model half of Exchange — HES↔MDMS interoperability standards
The DER / flexibility half of Exchange — solar, storage, EV charging
The demand-response half of Exchange — DR events and flexibility reporting
India's national digital document wallet — consumer-facing credential store
Related Repositories
ies-docs — IES architecture primitives and implementation guides
Digital Energy Grid (DEG) — upstream open protocol specification
DDM — Decentralized Data Marketplace (
DatasetItemschema family)
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