Roles of retailers in the peer-to-peer electricity market: A single retailer perspective

Wayes Tushar; Chau Yuen; Tapan Saha; Deb Chattopadhyay; Sohrab Nizami; Sarmad Hanif; Jan E Alam; H Vincent Poor

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.103278

Roles of retailers in the peer-to-peer electricity market: A single retailer perspective

iScience. 2021 Oct 19;24(11):103278. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103278. eCollection 2021 Nov 19.

Authors

Wayes Tushar¹, Chau Yuen², Tapan Saha¹, Deb Chattopadhyay³, Sohrab Nizami¹, Sarmad Hanif⁴, Jan E Alam⁴, H Vincent Poor⁵

Affiliations

¹ The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
² Singapore University of Technology and Design, 8 Somapah Road, Singapore 487372, Singapore.
³ The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA.
⁴ Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99354, USA.
⁵ Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.

Abstract

Despite extensive research in the past five years and several successfully completed and on-going pilot projects, regulators are still reluctant to implement peer-to-peer trading at a large scale in today's electricity market. The reason could partly be attributed to the perceived disadvantage of current market participants such as retailers due to their exclusion from market participation-a fundamental property of decentralized peer-to-peer trading. As a consequence, recently, there has been growing pressure from energy service providers in favor of retailers' participation in peer-to-peer trading. However, the role of retailers in the peer-to-peer market is yet to be established, as no existing study has challenged this fundamental circumspection of decentralized trading. In this context, this perspective takes the first step to discuss the feasibility of retailers' involvement in the peer-to-peer market. In doing so, we identify key characteristics of retail-based and peer-to-peer electricity markets and discuss our viewpoint on how to incorporate a single retailer in a peer-to-peer market without compromising the fundamental decision-making characteristics of both markets. Finally, we give an example of a hypothetical business model to demonstrate how a retailer can be a part of a peer-to-peer market with a promise of collective benefits for the participants.

Keywords: Energy flexibility; Energy management; Energy policy; Energy resources; Energy systems.

Publication types

Review