Peer-to-peer energy trading: A review of the literature

Abstract

Distributed energy resources have increased considerably in the United States and the world in the last decade. The proliferation of prosumers generates the opportunity to have a more decentralized and open energy market. Given this opportunity, the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading energy paradigm appears, where consumers and prosumers can exchange energy without the need for an intermediary. Because P2P energy trading plays a fundamental role in the proliferation of renewable energies and the system flexibility for a low-carbon energy transition, this paper provides a review of the P2P energy trading that is necessary to understand the current approaches, challenges, and future research that should be conducted in this area. As a result, areas for consideration were identified and grouped into the following six topics: (1) trading platform, (2) blockchain, (3) game theory, (4) simulation, (5) optimization, and (6) algorithms. The study concludes by identifying several challenges that may give way to future research, such as integrating generation, transmission, and distribution into studies, large-scale studies, and modeling of consumer and prosumer complex behavior. Given P2P energy trading is a relatively new topic, there is still much work to be done to successfully implement the real-world model.