EVOLVING COMPETITIVE ELECTRICITY MARKETS: A STUDY OF ENABLEMENT THROUGH TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS

Background / Objectives: This paper discusses an approach to achieve the autonomous market objective through the effective use advanced analytics and cognitive solutions powered by internet of things and mobility. This paper includes details on conducted survey on electricity consumers in Tamil Nadu, India along with their inference on status of impact of technology towards progress of competitive electricity markets. Methods: Worldwide landscape of electricity industry such as business, grid and asset management alongside customer experience and market models are transforming quite rapidly towards achievement of autonomous electricity markets. Governments, their regulatory bodies and utility organizations are focusing on establishing new business models and thus help stage-manage their people, organization and its governance structure towards achievement of their objectives. The fact that there are enormous differences in the outcome achieved by worldwide utilities is explained through this study of internal and external factors influencing the progress of movement to autonomous state. Findings: This study of global utilities brings out three key internal influences depictions such as people, organization behaviors as well as key technology readiness. In this paper various influences such as shrinking grid businesses due to various challenges such as increasing micro grids or distributed generation resources, regulatory pressures on cost reduction with the ageing infrastructure and diminishing skills are discussed. Specific focus has been given on grid organizations with the emphasis to prevent them from death spiral due to shrinking grid businesses. This paper explains why these technologies are imperatives to energy and utility organizations and how they will empower every stakeholder with digital experience and equal opportunity to perform their businesses while in the challenging environment. Applications / Improvements: This paper does not include discussion around other influences such as people, organization & social behaviors, traditional applications and solutions that help manage the business as usual. Hence it is proposed to continue the research work to cover the detailed aspects and publish in the further proceedings