The Electricity Retail Market: Requeriments for an E-Business System

In the last decade the electric energy market as changed is structure in several countries, mainly in the most developed, ones where the regulated activity of electrical companies where a monopoly or an oligopoly of all sectors from generation to the distribution. Changes brought new structures and new markets. The first market is between the generation plants and the wholesalers. The second market takes pace in the wholesale market where the retailers acquire the electricity that will sell to their clients the third market. To support this new reality advanced information systems are needed. This paper addresses the use of e-Commerce systems to support the electricity markets. The main requirements of the technological structure for an electricity retail company in a deregulated electricity market are identified and evaluated. The purposed solution is based on a B2B (Business– to–Business) structure to deal with the relations between the retailer and the wholesale side, and a B2C (Business–to–Client) dealing with the relation between the retailer and its clients that could be in the industrial, commercial, social or even domestic sectors.