Competitive strategies for differentiated services of power trading platforms under the situation of release of electricity selling market

Abstract

With the gradual liberalization of the electricity selling market in China, an increasing number of power trading entities have emerged. Competition in the electricity selling market is highlighted, and introducing new challenges related to price bidding has become a new problem in power marketization. Following the latest reforms in the electricity selling market, an increasing number of power trading platforms have appeared in the electricity selling market, and the differentiated competition of service quality has become an essential means for these platforms to obtain users. Therefore, this paper studies the decision-making for service competition among power trading platforms under different power market structures such as monopoly, oligopoly and competitive market, and explores the optimal differentiation strategy for power trading platforms. The results show that: (1) Under different electricity selling market structures, the service quality level and service charge formation of the power trading platforms are related to the service input coefficient of the platform, and the changing relationship between these variables is also significantly affected by the market concentration degree in the competitive market; (2) The profit of the power trading platform is closely related to the level of its service quality, showing notable variations across different market structures; (3) Platform service charges are also related to the degree of differentiation of service quality and the degree of mismatch of users’ service expectations under the competition of platforms. Platforms offering high-quality services are more sensitive to changes in service quality differentiation compared to those offering lower quality services. This study can not only enrich the power market competition theory and provide theoretical reference for the competitive decision-making of power trading platform, but also provide theoretical guidance for developing high-end competition in the electricity selling market in the process of China’s electricity selling market reform.