Consumer-centric Electricity Market: Review of key European projects

Wide-scale deployment of renewable energy resources and the advent of active consumers with demand side management capabilities are posing significant challenges to power system operation along with electricity market. There is a push for electricity market to transform from centralised, supplier-centric structure towards more decentralised, consumer-centric structure. Consumer-centric electricity market (CEM) envisions the transition of electricity end-users from currently having no market power to active market participants with capability of trading energy and/or flexibility from their resources. In Europe, there have been number of R&D projects implemented the notion of CEM in last decade. This paper presents some key outcomes of the projects and categorises them based on the trading product. Furthermore, it presents the issues associated to connect the market designs, demonstrated under different categories, to the central electricity, wholesale and ancillary service markets.