Energy trading market evolution to the energy internet a feasibility review on the enabling internet of things (IoT) cloud technologies

Energy trading market is a consequence of the grid evolution, which has been highly regulated and accessible to a small group of stakeholders so far. Being a fundamental part of national economies, the business models and the operating regulatory structures have been the subject of intense research and experimentation. At the same time, the increasing integration of distributed energy resources to the microgrid level changes the dependence of the grid infrastructure from fossil and nuclear to renewable energy sources, smart storage and smart management. In this paper, it is argued that this shift which marks the transformation towards the next industrial era, puts in the market foreground a big number of smaller producers and ultimately all the end users, in the form of actively engaged prosumers. Furthermore, it is shown that the computational resources and technology to support an open, widely accessible and fair peer-to-peer trading market, are already available. And that such an implementation is feasible and immediately achievable using just commercial products and a side-by-side approach in the place of unrealistic big-bang type grid upgrades.