A smart collaborative structure for information centric retail electricity market

The electricity retail market nowadays still remains more or less enclosed. Massive family end-users could only purchase electricity from grid companies. The opportunities of being an electricity retailer are hardly available as they are tightly seized in grid companies hands. However, this rigid scheme is promising to be shifted with the deployment of household electricity storage devices, distributed renewable power generators and smart micro-grid, etc. In the paper, we propose a distributed electricity retail system design to enhance the participation of family end-users. The new design allows them to take on more roles, they could not only readily retrieve electricity transaction details but also freely make power exchanges among each other. We also explain how information interaction and power delivery are supported through new network architecture and electric entities. In the end, we address some facing challenges to this new system when it comes to deployment and application.