Business Models for Stakeholder Participation in the Future TE World

Abstract

The electric power industry is rapidly changing, and the change is accelerating with the increased penetration of distributed energy resources like wind, solar, and storage. Another trend, beneficial electrification, ultimately will convert a large portion of energy consumption from liquid fuels to electricity, further accelerating grid transformation. At the same time, consumer expectations are changing with the relationship between consumers, utilities, and other entities radically changing with consumers actively participating in the electric grid. Utilities and policymakers will need to respond to this grid evolution.In the future grid, stakeholders will see a more participatory, distributed, resilient, and cleaner grid, but new business models will need to emerge. The utility industry and other stakeholders are looking at new economic-based approaches like Transactive Energy to provide a prominent role in the transition from a top-down, centralized system to a more bottom-up distributed system for value transfer. What architecture, procedures, controls, and business models will drive this adoption of Transactive Energy in the future grid?It is currently unclear what business models will prevail for both utilities and consumers in this new vision. Will it be a single business model, or will there be many business models based upon different use cases and locations supported by a future Transactive Energy architecture? In this paper, participants will get a quick overview of the expected future grid architecture and likely business models enabled by that architecture, allowing for flexible coordination of both centralized and distributed electrical grid elements.