Complementarity of residential, industrial, and municipal participants in local energy markets: a real-life data showcase

The energy transition has caused severe congestion in distribution networks, leading to economic and societal challenges. In the Netherlands, grid congestion hampers business growth and incurs significant costs per MWh of energy not delivered. Local electricity markets (LEMs) offer a potential solution to grid congestion by enabling local energy trading, which aligns local production and consumption to improve grid utilization. However, real-world adoption faces challenges in ensuring adequate market conditions, such as sufficient liquidity and complementarity between production and consumption profiles. This study analyzes the energy profiles of Dutch wholesale market participants serving energy communities, industrial parks, and decentralized governments, using real-life 15-minute interval data from the ENTRNCE Trader platform in 2024. The Dutch case study demonstrates that these diverse consumption and production profiles are indeed complementary and capable of trading locally under real-world conditions. Moreover, the findings reveal that the volume of energy traded locally can be further increased after implementing a LEM. This suggests that, in general, LEMs could achieve sufficient liquidity when these diverse profiles combine, paving the way for both time and financial investment in their development.