Pricing decisions in peer-to-peer and prosumer-centred electricity markets: Experimental analysis in Germany and the United Kingdom

Prosumer-centred electricity market models such as peer-to-peer communities can enable optimized supply and demand of locally generated electricity as well as an active participation of citizens in the energy transition. An important element of active participation is the improved ability of community members to identify and choose who they transact with in a much more granular way than is usual. Despite this key novelty and the social core of prosumer-centred markets, little is known about how citizens would trade with different actors involved in the system. This article reports a preregistered cross-national experiment investigating individual trading preferences in a peer-to-peer community with a variety of private and non-private trading actors. The data from the United Kingdom (n = 441) and Germany (n = 440) shows that set buying and selling prices strongly vary, pointing to three systematically different trading strategies that individuals apply as a function of involved trading actor. Findings moreover reveal that trading decisions are determined by individuals’ political orientation, place attachment, and climate change beliefs as well as individual differences in trust in the involved trading actor. Finally, the results illustrate high consistency in trading preferences across nations. However, nation-level differences emerged when decisions were made publicly visible, emphasising the need to consider context-effects in peer-to-peer system design. The findings have implications for the development of prosumer-centred energy models and the design of interventions to increase citizen participation across national contexts

Peer-to-peer electricity trading and the sharing economy: social, markets and regulatory perspectives

Peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity trading is a new data-driven business model currently being trialed within the energy sector. Introducing P2P transactions to an essential service such as energy supply could have far-reaching implications for individuals and the grid. This paper raises considerations and questions from social, market design and regulatory points of view, which should be understood and addressed by societies and policymakers. It does this by considering under what circumstances it is reasonable to conceptualize P2P electricity trading as part of the sharing economy, and drawing parallels to the sharing economy experience in other sectors. In order to reap the full societal benefits, while avoiding considerable risks to infrastructure and individuals, a policy approach promoting dialogue and innovation is necessary. We suggest the regulatory sandbox is the most appropriate tool to achieve this and would help avoid the breakdown of trust between policymakers and platform companies observed in other sectors

Capturing the distributional impacts of long-term low-carbon transitions

Major policy proposals often require a distributional impact assessment, focusing on differential financial and other impacts across population segments. Such assessments are rare, however, at the multi-decadal scale addressed in long-term (e.g. to 2050) low carbon transition modelling. There is therefore a risk of socially inequitable outcomes, which in turn presents a socio-political risk for decision-makers driving transitions. This paper uses a literature review and expert interviews to identify mechanisms by which low carbon transitions could differentially impact population sub-groups. As well as impacts of policy costs on bills, this includes factors such as ability to connect to heat networks or install onsite generation or storage. An approach to exploring distributional impacts across a range of long term scenarios from a United Kingdom energy model (ESME), is proposed. This sets out how bill changes and other costs associated with low carbon transition could impact different income quintiles in the UK

Comparing Automated Methods to Detect Explicit Content in Song Lyrics

International audienceThe Parental Advisory Label (PAL) is a warning label that is placed on audio recordings inrecognition of profanity or inappropriate references, with the intention of alerting parents of material potentially unsuitable for children.Since 2015, digital providers – such as iTunes,Spotify, Amazon Music and Deezer – also follow PAL guidelines and tag such tracks as “explicit”. Nowadays, such labelling is carried out mainly manually on voluntary basis, with the drawbacks of being time consuming and therefore costly, error prone and partly a subjective task. In this paper, we compare auto-mated methods ranging from dictionary-basedlookup to state-of-the-art deep neural networks to automatically detect explicit contents in English lyrics. We show that more complex models perform only slightly better on this task, and relying on a qualitative analysis of thedata, we discuss the inherent hardness and subjectivity of the task

Future energy retail markets: stakeholder views on multiple electricity supplier models in the UK

In the transition to smart, low-carbon energy systems, the energy retail market is evolving. Many non-traditional actors are beginning to offer services that can help accommodate distributed supply intermittency. At the same time, they provide greater choice for consumers through new electricity products, such as specialised supply for assets such as EVs and smart appliances, or democratising energy supply, e.g. through peer-to-peer energy trading and community energy schemes. This represents a shift from a supplier-centric energy system to one placing greater emphasis on the role of energy end-users. However, under the current ‘supplier hub principle’ governing the UK market, domestic consumers’ interaction with the energy system is mediated by a single licensed supplier, creating barriers for non-traditional business models. This paper shares findings from eight semi-structured interviews conducted in summer 2020 with regulators, innovators, energy suppliers, and consumer advocacy groups on the future of the UK’s energy retail market and consumers’ relationship with it. The research focuses on one alternative to the supplier hub principle; a ‘multiple supplier model’, which would enable consumers to have multiple electricity suppliers at the same time, engaging with non-traditional models whilst keeping their national-level supplier. Interviewees highlighted peer-to-peer energy trading, and community energy, as well as the ability to bundle supply with technologies such as electric vehicles or smart appliances, as the most transformational use cases that multiple supplier models could facilitate. Although most interviewees felt that the current supplier hub model is not fit to support the energy transition, contention remains around how best to replace it. Findings offer insight into the challenges posed by the supplier hub principle; the advantages and disadvantages of permitting multiple suppliers; and the key aspects of interactions with multiple energy suppliers from the consumer’s perspective. This work contributes towards understanding the landscape of future supplier models and the challenges faced in transforming the energy retail market

Target Design in SEM-Based Nano-CT and Its Influence on X-ray Imaging

Nano-computed tomography (nano-CT) based on scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is utilized for multimodal material characterization in one instrument. Since SEM-based CT uses geometrical magnification, X-ray targets can be adapted without any further changes to the system. This allows for designing targets with varying geometry and chemical composition to influence the X-ray focal spot, intensity and energy distribution with the aim to enhance the image quality. In this paper, three different target geometries with a varying volume are presented: bulk, foil and needle target. Based on the analyzed electron beam properties and X-ray beam path, the influence of the different target designs on X-ray imaging is investigated. With the obtained information, three targets for different applications are recommended. A platinum (Pt) bulk target tilted by 25◦ as an optimal combination of high photon flux and spatial resolution is used for fast CT scans and the investigation of high-absorbing or large sample volumes. To image low-absorbing materials, e.g., polymers or organic materials, a target material with a characteristic line energy right above the detector energy threshold is recommended. In the case of the observed system, we used a 30◦ tilted chromium (Cr) target, leading to a higher image contrast. To reach a maximum spatial resolution of about 100 nm, we recommend a tungsten (W) needle target with a tip diameter of about 100 nm

Urban Energy Club - Final report

Urban Energy Club (UEC) provided a 10kW/20kWh communal battery on the roof of a local authority-owned block of flats to deliver LV flexibility services and support collective self-consumption. The battery joined an existing community-owned 37kWp PV array on the building and was integrated into the building’s P2P local energy market trial, CommUNITY. A facilitating supplier (EDF) created the CommUNITY platform to virtually connect the assets behind the landlord’s meter to residents. Through the P2P platform participating residents received equal allocations of the solar output and battery. They received on bill credits for any solar they consumed, shared or sold to neighbours, as well as a share of the income generated through flexibility services. The platform optimised the use of the battery to increase residents’ savings. Urban Energy Club provides insight into how virtual allocation of communal assets can make the LV flexibility market more inclusive for community energy projects and bring benefits for low-income, disengaged customers

Love Me, Love Me, Say (and Write!) that You Love Me: Enriching the WASABI Song Corpus with Lyrics Annotations

We present the WASABI Song Corpus, a large corpus of songs enriched with metadata extracted from music databases on the Web, and resulting from the processing of song lyrics and from audio analysis. More specifically, given that lyrics encode an important part of the semantics of a song, we focus here on the description of the methods we proposed to extract relevant information from the lyrics, such as their structure segmentation, their topics, the explicitness of the lyrics content, the salient passages of a song and the emotions conveyed. The creation of the resource is still ongoing: so far, the corpus contains 1.73M songs with lyrics (1.41M unique lyrics) annotated at different levels with the output of the above mentioned methods. Such corpus labels and the provided methods can be exploited by music search engines and music professionals (e.g. journalists, radio presenters) to better handle large collections of lyrics, allowing an intelligent browsing, categorization and segmentation recommendation of songs.Comment: 10 page