Business Models in the Smart Grid: Challenges, Opportunities and Proposals for Prosumer Profitability

Abstract

Considering that non-renewable energy resources are dwindling, the smart grid turns out to be one of the most promising and compelling systems for the future of energy. Not only does it combine efficient energy consumption with avant-garde technologies related to renewable energies, but it is also capable of providing several beneficial utilities, such as power monitoring and data provision. When smart grid end users turn into prosumers, they become arguably the most important value creators within the smart grid and a decisive agent of change in terms of electricity usage. There is a plethora of research and development areas related to the smart grid that can be exploited for new business opportunities, thus spawning another branch of the so-called "green economy" focused on turning smart energy usage into a profitable business. This paper deals with emerging business models for smart grid prosumers, their strengths and weaknesses and puts forward new prosumer-oriented business models, along with their value propositions.

Energetic communities for community energy: A review of key issues and trends shaping integrated community energy systems

“…In this section, we fill this gap using the framework of the business model canvas [108]. This framework is extensively used to develop new business models for smart energy systems [109].…”

Contribution to the design, implementation and standardization of semantic middleware architectures for the Smart Grid

“…Overall, and as stated in [11], prosumers will be fully involved in the economic and technological parts of energy consumption, as well as creating new value for the enhanced power grid. A mathematical analysis that models the potential profitability of their activities has been included in the next chapter.…”

“…Once it has been delivered in the main part of the middleware architecture (9). The system will then change a status where the answer has already been received (10) and delivered to the middleware component that started it (11), to finally get back to its original idle state (12). As it happened before, other possible situation is that a request has been sent to a device that is not available.…”

“…Once an answer is obtained from the hardware (8), it will travel back to the middleware (9) until it reaches the hardware abstractor and is sent back to the securitization component (10). The latter will be responsible for deciphering the message received in the middleware solution and sending it back to the high level of the software architecture (11) and delivering it to the application that started the request (12).…”

“…"A study on challenges and opportunities for energy business developments in the Smart City". 8th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management (CIO-ICIEOM-IIIE), 2014 [187].…”