How P2P Trading Helps an Electricity Retailer Exposed to Volatile Spot Prices: A Case Study

This paper performs a case study to analyse the impacts of variable spot prices on retailer income in the National Electricity Market (NEM). Further, the effectiveness of a peer-to-peer (P2P) trading-based local energy market (LEM) to address those negative impacts is evaluated. The LEM is operated under a single substation consisting of consumers and prosumers with solar PVs and batteries. Energy trading is performed among the sellers and buyers based on real-world data from an Australian town. Two different scenarios of high and low spot prices are considered to analyse the effect of volatile spot prices. The energy buying and selling by the retailer is explored through the metrics of five different parameters. Eventually, simulation results of the P2P and traditional business-as-usual (BAU) trading are analysed. It is found that LEM helps the retailer to reduce the impact of higher spot prices with more stable demand. Additionally, LEM improves the self-sufficiency and self-consumption of the distribution network.