In recent years, power systems have undergone changes in technology and definition of the associated stakeholders. With the increase in distributed renewable generation and small-to medium-sized consumers starting to actively participate on the supply side, a suitable incorporation of decentralized agents into the power system is required. A promising scheme to support this shift is given by local electricity markets. These provide an opportunity to extend the liberal wholesale markets for electrical power found in Europe and the United States to the communal level. Compared to these more established markets, local electricity markets, however, neither have few practical implementations nor standardized frameworks. In order to fill this research gap and classify the types of local electricity markets, the presented paper therefore starts with the challenges that these markets attempt to solve. This is then extended to an analysis of the theoretical and practical background with a focus on these derived challenges. The theoretical background is provided in the form of an introduction to state-of-the-art models and the associated literature, whereas the practical background is provided in form of a summary of ongoing and recent projects on local electricity markets. As a result, this paper presents a foundation for future research and projects attempting to approach the here presented challenges in distribution of generation, integration of demand response, decentralization of markets and legal and social issues via local electricity markets.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of wine closure types on the quality perception of wine consumers in a traditional wine market, combined with the willingness to pay for red and white wines in bottles closed with screw caps compared with that for wines in bottles with a cork closure. Design/methodology/approach An online experiment with 436 Austrian wine consumers was conducted in a two-by-two between-groups design. To assess the quality of Austrian red and white wine, quality indicators such as origin, grape variety, awards, the content of residual sugar, vintage, geographical indication, ageing potential, organic certification, vineyard designation and brand (producer) have been applied. Furthermore, different involvement levels as well as willingness to pay were taken into consideration. Findings Contrary to earlier findings, results confirm that Austrian consumers do not generally perceive wines (both red and white) in a screw cap bottle to be lower or different in quality from those in a cork-closed bottle. However, consumers expect red and white wines in bottles with a cork closure to be higher in price than wines in bottles with a screw cap. Among established quality indicators, the present analysis shows that price is the strongest cue for quality when it comes to wines and indicates that wines in bottles closed with corks and bearing a higher price tag are considered to be of higher quality. Research limitations/implications This research comes with limitations, such as the absence of sensory differences. Moreover, the research design is based exclusively on the description of wines and a limited set of quality indicators and does not involve the actual tasting of wines. Practical implications Outcomes suggest that in the strategic positioning of wines, the difference in wine consumers’ quality perceptions between wine bottles with screw caps and cork closures plays a smaller role than anticipated. Findings are relevant for practitioners, particularly in old-world wine markets where cork is still seen as the closure of choice for higher-quality wines. Originality/value The results of this survey contribute to understanding consumers of an established old-world wine market and their attitudes towards alternative bottle closure types such as screw caps. It adds new insights to the research stream of the quality perception of wines.

Due to the increase of volatile renewable energy resources, additional flexibility will be necessary in the electricity system in the future to ensure a technically and economically efficient network operation. Although home energy management systems hold potential for a supply of flexibility to the grid, private end users often neglect or even ignore recommendations regarding beneficial behavior. In this work, the social acceptance and requirements of a participatively developed home energy management system with focus on (i) system support optimization, (ii) self-consumption and self-sufficiency optimization, and (iii) additional comfort functions are determined. Subsequently, the socially-accepted flexibility potential of the home energy management system is estimated. Using methods of online household survey, cluster analysis, and energy-economic optimization, the socially-accepted techno-economic potential of households in a three-community cluster sample area is computed. Results show about a third of the participants accept the developed system. This yields a shiftable load of nearly 1.8 MW within the small sample area. Furthermore, the system yields the considerably larger monetary surplus on the supplier-side due to its focus on system support optimization. New electricity market opportunities are necessary to adequately reward a systemically useful load behavior of households.