Business model and market design for local digitalized electricity trading : several insights from the NEMoGrid project

The increasing role of renewables, together with the escalation of digital technologies and the pressure for a more active role of consumers and prosumers, are the natural basis for the development of Local Electricity Markets (LEM). The goal of this paper is to contribute to the current debate on LEM, drafting several proposals about key issues to be considered in outlining the LEM business model and market design. We take advantage of the ongoing project "NEMoGrid", which aims at defining and validating a prototype of LEM by integrating local PVs generation into the grid and with a peer-to-peer trading scheme. Transactions are settled on the Ethereum blockchain and the LEM is validated through onsite tests in Switzerland. Such tests are still running, therefore we use preliminary findings to make our suggestions, also highlighting several caveats and policy complexities. [Publisher's text].