Bidding on a Peer-to-Peer Energy Market: An Exploratory Field Study

Abstract

Faced with the challenge of increasing the share of renewable energy generation, many countries have put local peer-to-peer (P2P) energy markets on their political agenda for driving the adoption of renewable energy. This is the first study to examine this concept empirically in a real-world P2P market, in which renewable energy was auctioned among households in a local area. Over the duration of an entire year, this field study investigated whether households engaged in the bidding and trading of energy, and which prices emerged on the P2P energy market. The results show that the market outcomes were efficient and that households engaged surprisingly actively in bidding, despite energy being a low-involvement good. The findings indicate that P2P energy markets can have a positive impact on balancing demand and supply, thereby addressing the fundamental challenge of distributed renewable energy systems.