E-BUSINESS FOR THE ELECTRICITY RETAIL MARKET A Business to Client perspective

Abstract: In the new deregulated market of the electricity industry the communication and e-Business infrastructure plays a main role for the efficiency of all the entities present in the electricity sector. From generation to the final client there are two markets, the wholesale and the retail market. Specific characteristics of the electricity industry make the communication support a fundamental tool to reflect the changes made by one of the intervenients in the whole value chain. When prices change at the wholesale market it is necessary to reflect them at the final consumers. Without a bidirectional and reliable communication systems several problems could occur, from spikes in the electricity prices that could take retail companies to bankruptcy, to huge blackouts that happened in Europe and in the United States. The goal of this paper is to present a model for the electricity retail market. Several studies have been done about the electricity markets, the grand majority focus their attention on the wholesale market. Our proposal is to analyse the e-Business communication structure in a Business-to-Client perspective. 1