Abstract
This article introduces new roles in future peer-to-peer electricity trading markets. Following a qualitative approach, firstly, the value network of the current electricity market is presented. To do so, service streams, critical roles, activities, and their setting in the electricity market are identified. Secondly, in order to identify the main sources of uncertainty, the business model matrix framework is utilized to analyze peer-to-peer electricity trading. Thirdly, four future scenarios are built based on user involvement and customer ownership. The outcome of the scenario building is the emergence of new roles, brokers, and representatives in the future peer-to-peer electricity markets. Fourth, based on the four future scenarios, changes in the value network, new roles, and emerging/evolving activities are identified. Finally, the two new roles are discussed from grid structure, security and privacy, legal, and data protection perspectives. The data is gathered by conducting semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in the current electricity market as well as potential disruptors. This article elaborates on the configuration of the value network in the electricity market and highlights the changes that peer-to-peer trading imposes to the status quo. Through the outcomes of the value network analysis, it assists policy makers to consider the requirements and current market players to reconsider their business models.
Highlights
Electricity surpluses as the result of applying affordable renewable energy sources (RES, e.g., solar panels) combined with installation of storage devices at citizens’ sites have increased the probability of self-consumption.As a result, local energy production is complementing or substituting the traditional pattern of central electricity generation in power plants and delivery through transmission and distribution grids [1]
The data for identifying the value network of the current electricity market was primarily collected through a systematic literature review, which covers state-of-the-art publications in the field of peer-to-peer electricity trading by incorporating books, journal articles, and conference papers
Through the outcomes of the value network analysis, the article has shown how peer-to-peer trading associated with the current smart city trend of inclusiveness of citizens challenges and seemingly changes roles and activities in the future electricity markets
Summary
Electricity surpluses as the result of applying affordable renewable energy sources (RES, e.g., solar panels) combined with installation of storage devices (e.g., home batteries, electric vehicles, etc.) at citizens’ sites have increased the probability of self-consumption.As a result, local (distributed) energy production is complementing or substituting the traditional pattern of central electricity generation in power plants and delivery through transmission and distribution grids [1]. Fine-grained electricity metering and bidirectional communication are possible due to the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as smart meters and home energy management systems (HEMS), which are penetrating citizens’ lives and are said to make systems smarter. The technological push has played an inevitable role in “smartening up” cities. The call to “smarten up”, and whereas the focus seems to have been on normative framings, where technology has been found to play a primary facilitating role, a shift can be detected in contemporary academic and popular debates in the framing of citizen roles [2]. It is believed that having better insights into citizen’s needs, preferences, patterns, and so forth will support the development of sophisticated services as well as results tailored to their needs, and which may contribute to, for example, planning initiatives, and the design and expansion of digital infrastructure [3]. Many smart city initiatives assert to be “citizen-focused” or “citizen-centric”, which, arguably, may be more of a theoretical–
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