Elena Georgarakis

Elena is a master student in Sustainable Development at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. In her studies she focuses on the production and consumption of energy and materials in society. In her master thesis, Elena investigates the preferences of households who produce their own renewable electricity regarding the trading of surplus electricity with peers in their community. 

With the increasing deployment of renewable energy technologies like photovoltaic panels, centralized electricity grids will face issues regarding the balance of supply and demand. Additionally, feeding surplus energy into these grids will become decreasingly financially attractive for households producing and consuming electricity due to policy changes in the Netherlands. Decentralized smart grids provide a solution to this problem while also offering the opportunity for forming local electricity markets with peer-to-peer (P2P) trading schemes. In her study, Elena will elicit prosumers’ preferences for participating in such trading schemes by using a choice-based conjoint analysis (CBC). The study’s results can be used to advise the developers of these electricity trading platforms regarding their design, while also giving an indication of prosumers willingness to participate in them. Elena’s master thesis will contribute to the research about the efficient use of renewable electricity, thereby driving the energy transition.