The course covers an extensive overview of peer-to-peer trading in energy communities and local energy markets as a way to restructure the current energy system into more localized, decentralized equilibria of generation and consumption. Energy Communities with and without local markets offer a sharing model to include consumers, prosumers and producers on a local level in the energy generation, distribution and sales process. Thus, local households (or smaller industrial customers) can become active participants in the energy market. The same principles can be applied for solely industrial sites. The course focuses on electricity trading with excurses into other forms of energy (such as heat).

Beginning with the challenges of the current energy system, the course introduces and discusses energy communities, neighborhoods and peer-to-peer trading in depth over 4 days. Research theory (energy market engineering) sets the base on day 1 for the application focus on day 2. An overview of current regulation and IT solutions (including an introduction into blockchain technology and overview of decentralized ledger technology in energy) is provided to give an understanding of how peer-to-peer trading in virtual and actual communities can be realized.

A detailed analysis of the agent behavior in local markets is provided on day 3. The course focuses on transferring the motivation and willingness-to-pay of local market participants into mathematical models for algorithmic trading solutions. Moreover, the importance of different market attributes is presented. Thus, the basis for developing long-term sustainable markets is discussed. The course closes on day 4 with the presentation and development of business models for peer-to- peer trading for several market participants (e.g. utilities, end consumers, community managers). The Go-To-Market for peer-to-peer energy communities is discussed in its different stages.

Current and future implementations are presented throughout the course to deepen the understanding of the participants and to understand the current status of the topic in a global perspective. Participants of this course are encouraged (but not obliged) to prepare a short presentation on their current projects/challenges in peer-to-peer energy trading to present in the course. The presentations will be discussed and challenges addressed as hands-on learning experiences.