PhaseShift helps India's power sector companies and institutions turn the energy transition into lasting advantage, bringing proven international market expertise to India's regulatory and commercial reality.
PhaseShift is an independent energy transition advisory. We shape and deliver initiatives that future-proof grids for rapidly evolving technologies, markets and regulation. We work with organisations across the power sector value chain, from regulators and network operators to generators, developers, energy consumers and investors. For each, the transition brings different challenges and opportunities, and we help them turn it into lasting advantage.
PhaseShift was founded because the principles of a smart, flexible grid travel across markets, but the mechanisms that make them work must be built locally. Drawing on hands-on experience designing and implementing flexibility markets in the UK, and advising on them across Europe and the US, we adapt proven approaches to India's distinct regulatory and commercial context.
The grid of the future will be won through flexibility, and flexibility only works when markets, regulation and engineering are designed together.
PhaseShift is founder-led and built on practice, not theory. Ayan and Avinash worked at the frontier of the UK's shift to a flexible grid from complementary sides of the problem. Avinash helped shape how Great Britain's networks and industry bodies designed flexibility at a system level. Ayan worked on the commercial and regulatory mechanics that turn that design into value for utilities and market participants, across the UK, Europe and the US.
Together, they bring more than 30 years of hands-on experience designing markets, working within complex regulatory environments and turning technical insight into commercially workable solutions. They know what works, what doesn't, and what it takes to move from ambition to implementation, and they bring that to one question: how India can build a grid that is both renewables-rich and reliable.
Ayan leads client advisory and commercial strategy at PhaseShift. Working with flexibility market platforms in London over the last few years, he advised utilities across the UK, Europe and North America on market design, procurement and regulation. He now brings that experience home to India, helping regulators, network operators and energy businesses adapt proven approaches to India's regulatory and commercial context.
Ayan is Managing Partner and Founder at PhaseShift, where he leads client advisory and commercial strategy. He brings experience across flexibility markets, energy regulation and utility strategy, with a focus on how market design and commercial models can help power systems integrate more renewables and make better use of grid flexibility.
Over the last few years, he worked with flexibility market platforms in London, advising utilities across the UK, Europe, the US and Canada on turning distributed energy resources into dependable grid capacity. His work spanned market development, procurement design and regulatory engagement, with a focus on how flexibility can accelerate connections, defer network investment and create value that regulators recognise.
He is well versed in the frameworks shaping flexibility markets internationally, including Great Britain's RIIO-ED3 price control, the EU Network Code on Demand Response and US FERC Order 2222. Ayan holds an MSc in Environmental Governance from the University of Oxford, where his studies and research focused on the energy transition, and a bachelor's degree in Environmental Sustainability and International Relations from the University of British Columbia. Early work on natural resource governance and mining gave him a grounding in the institutional, social and commercial realities of transition.
At PhaseShift, Ayan brings this international experience home to India, working with regulators, network operators and energy businesses to adapt proven approaches to the country's regulatory and commercial context.
Avinash leads technical methodology and quality assurance at PhaseShift. Over two decades spanning GE, Alstom, Cardiff University and senior leadership at the Energy Networks Association, he helped shape Great Britain's transition to a flexible, smarter grid. He now applies that system-level expertise to India, developing solutions that are technically sound, practical to implement and tailored to local conditions.
Dr. Avinash Aithal is Technical Principal and Co-founder at PhaseShift, bringing two decades of experience spanning power-system engineering, smart-grid research, technology development, market design and industry-wide delivery. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and holds a PhD in Smart Grids. His career has spanned roles with GE, Alstom and EA Technology, academic research at Cardiff University, and senior leadership at the Energy Networks Association (UK).
Avinash has helped shape Great Britain's transition towards a smarter, more flexible electricity system, working across utilities, government, regulators and industry to turn emerging policy and technical concepts into practical market frameworks. His experience covers power electronics, distribution system operation, flexibility markets, connections reform, techno-economic assessment, measurement and verification, and whole-system coordination.
His work has a growing international reach. He has shared lessons from the UK's energy transition with policymakers, utilities and sector leaders across multiple markets, and is a regular speaker at major energy and smart-grid forums in the UK and internationally.
Under his leadership, ENA's Open Networks programme received the 2025 International Smart Grid Action Network Award of Excellence for solutions that enhance grid operation. Avinash was an invited delegate at the Clean Energy Ministerial and Mission Innovation Ministerial in Busan, showcasing the UK's work on flexibility to an international audience.
Alongside his advisory work, Avinash is an Honorary Visiting Professor at Cardiff University, a member of UKRI's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Science, Engineering and Technology Board, and a published author on distribution system operation and flexibility services.
At PhaseShift, Avinash leads technical methodology and quality assurance, combining engineering rigour, market insight and delivery experience to develop solutions that are technically sound, practical to implement and tailored to local conditions.
Establish the business baseline, define the core problem and use focused market, regulatory, technical, operational and commercial analysis to test assumptions and identify the issues and opportunities that matter most.
Develop clear business, ambition and vision statements that align stakeholders, frame the choices ahead and create a practical basis for strategic decision-making.
Translate evidence and strategic priorities into a tailored solution, evaluating options and defining the preferred operating and commercial model, capabilities, partnerships, investment requirements and path to delivery.
Convert the chosen solution into an actionable deployment plan, with clear workstreams, ownership, governance, resources, milestones and measures of success, so delivery can begin with confidence.
Work alongside the client’s workforce to implement the plan in manageable phases, build internal capability and adapt delivery as needs evolve, maintaining focus on measurable outcomes and lasting value, rather than outputs alone.
Stakeholder mapping and engagement are embedded throughout, identifying who needs to be involved, understanding their interests and influence, creating alignment around key decisions, and maintaining support from diagnosis through to delivery.
We offer each stage on its own, in any combination or as a complete programme, shaped around where you are and what you need.
An interactive map of how India's power sector actually works.
It covers every regulator, generator, utility and market, and how power, money and regulatory authority move between them. We built it to keep our own thinking straight across a sector with this many moving parts, and now we are opening it up.
India's Power Ecosystem maps around 35 types of entity, from the Ministry of Power and CERC down to individual discoms, generators, exchanges and consumer categories, and more than 100 relationships between them. Each relationship is split by what actually moves along it: physical power, money or regulatory authority.
On top of that structure sit the mechanisms the sector trades through: day-ahead and real-time markets, ancillary services, renewable energy certificates, open access and long-term PPAs, alongside those still taking shape, such as the proposed capacity market and India's carbon credit trading scheme. Every entity has a short profile covering why it exists, what drives it, what keeps it up at night and where its money goes.
Every claim carries a confidence tag: verified against a named regulation or court judgment with a working citation, well corroborated, or plainly marked as our own inference. Where there is a gap, we show it rather than paper over it.
That wiring is where the useful questions sit, whether you are selling into the sector, investing in it or regulating it.
A discom's tariff order and its energy delivery travel through entirely different chains. Seeing power, money and regulation side by side is often where the real opportunity sits.
Open access lets a consumer buy directly from a developer, but the electrons still use the same wires and pay the same wheeling charges. The map keeps that distinction explicit rather than collapsing it.
Ancillary services, storage-as-a-service and a competitive capacity market sit at very different stages in India today. Every mechanism is tagged operational, emerging or not yet developed.
A companion module plots 72 distribution utilities across India by revenue, credit rating and losses, so financial stress and flexibility potential are visible at a glance.
If you work in Indian power, regulation, flexibility markets or investment, and this would be useful to you, we would like to hear from you and get you access to the full tool.
Select any part of the power system’s value chain to see what its stakeholders are navigating right now.
“How do we turn a peer-to-peer pilot into a framework that scales?”
“What should demand response look like once time-of-day tariffs are in force?”
“How do we stop curtailment eroding our returns?”
“Which states are ready for storage and flexibility, and why?”
“How do we connect more renewables faster on a constrained grid?”
“How do we balance a system where solar reshapes demand every evening?”
“How do we meet a sharper evening peak without costly power purchases?”
“Can flexibility defer the network upgrades that rooftop solar is forcing on us?”
“Time-of-day tariffs are coming. How do we turn them into savings?”
“Can our flexible load earn revenue, not just cut costs?”
“What new products will a renewables-rich grid need, beyond day-ahead and real-time energy?”
“How do we bring aggregated demand and storage into our markets as genuine participants?”
Please share your name, role and organisation, why you would like access, and how you could contribute.