Demand Management for Future Electricity Market

The society is electrifying at an accelerating pace and this creates demands for adjusting the consumption of electricity. Electricity is used in new ways e.g. in heat pumps and charging electric cars. In addition, the increase in renewable production methods such as solar and wind power poses new challenges for electric systems. Momentary consumption peaks caused by these phenomena burden both production and supply of electricity and this becomes expensive for the society. One solution for dealing with the peak moments is to create better circumstances for demandside management. More buildings and electricity consumers should have impact in how much they consume and when. This way the society’s whole consumption and unwanted emissions can be controlled.
Digitalization acts as a significant catalyst and enables new ways of operating also in electricity markets. It can already now be seen that new players are entering the electricity market ecosystem. This introduces new disruptive business models to the market and creates new kinds of services for the end customers. This has happened in many other business domains: Spotify disrupted the distribution and consumption of music. AirBnB has reshaped the hotel industry and Uber is changing the taxi business. Who will lead the electricity market? Electricity market will for sure change by virtue of the new business models enabled by the Internet. Producing and supplying electricity is very investment intensive and critical for the society. That is why digitalizing the electricity and power market must be executed in a very controlled matter and in commonly agreed terms.