Community Energy Literature Review

A workshop on Regulating the Energy Sector  was held in Bristol on 13th July as part of the HoSEM project. The research team expect to publish workshop outcomes in a few weeks, but these notes indicate some of the questions discussed. The challenges in today’s energy market . Regulation and legislation applied to peer-to-peer (P2P) trading; buying and selling energy, data storage and protection, platform technology, supply and provision rights, consumer and climate protection, energy security. Whose is the responsibility for driving energy regulation? The regulation of new partnerships in the energy market. The implications of making data on energy generation and distribution public through distributed ledger technology. Preferential Policies Which energy system trends does UK regulation favour? Does it favour centralised low-carbon generation? Under what circumstances might it favour P2P trading? The future of P2P trading Will P2P trading be outsourced to...

Some preliminary results are available from the  Household-Supplier Energy Market (HoSEM) project , mentioned in earlier posts, and are described in  “Goal-based automation of peer-to-peer electricity trading”. A broad view of the underlying technology is offered in “Review of Blockchain Technology and its Expectations: Case of the Energy Sector” Both papers can be accessed at https://www.researchgate.net/project/P2P-Energy-Trading-for-Renewables The HoSEM project is now the subject of a discussion group on the Community Energy England Hub website, at http://hub.communityenergyengland.org/projects/136/

The summary of the HoSEM project in the previous post might prompt questions from CE workers. Some are suggested below, with answers from the Grant Application Form (GAF), and further comments. (GAF:    http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/P031838/1 ) Who are the interested parties? Apart from the university researchers, the GAF names EDF Energy as a partner. Comment: this British energy company is owned by the French EDF (Électricité de France), which is itself state-owned and has world-wide interests. This raises the issue of how closely the HoSEM research is focussed on the UK. See   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/electricite_de_France How might a P2P system democratise the energy market? The GAF implies democratisation in part from the use of distributed ledger technology (said to provide all market participants with read and write access to the records for the production, sale, and purchase of energy).  Comment: would...

The following outline literature review may be helpful to readers interested in community energy projects: Community Energy and Peer-to-peer trading in the UK: an outline literature review. Contents Introduction Literature Conclusion Bibliography of on-line material 1 Introduction The topic of this outline literature review is the current difficult situation faced by community energy groups in the UK, and the way that local peer-to-peer trading of energy might provide a solution. Community energy groups are organisations operating at a local level and promoting some form of carbon reduction through energy saving or the generation of sustainable energy. This review concentrates on generation. Major difficulties restricting the growth of community energy initiatives in the UK are the very substantial reduction in recent years of the government subsidies for renewable energy schemes, and the limited capacity of the electricity grid to accept energy from geogra...