Energy Policy Instruments for Distributed Ledger Technology Empowered Peer-to-Peer Local Energy Markets

Abstract

Peer-to-peer energy trading and next generation local energy market mechanisms are expected to provide new use cases and opportunities within the future sharing economy landscape. To this anticipation, we propose alternative incentive mechanisms as energy policy instruments that can be used by policy makers for directly supporting local energy producers, and hence indirectly the consumers, at current local energy markets using capabilities provided by contemporary distributed ledger technology. Under such peer-to-peer local market setting, we first detail market pricing and relevant market parameters thoroughly, and then we discuss fair incentive distribution to local producers in detail, by means of two distinct incentive systems what we call as the fixed stipend and the decaying stipend incentive mechanisms, respectively. We provide an analysis of market pricing and market parameters under German power market conditions, and an illustration of proposed support instruments with resorting to three scenarios experimented on a local energy market test bed that is equipped with realistic energy generation and consumption profiles for its participants.