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The Sharing Economy for the Smart Grid

The sharing economy has disrupted housing and transportation sectors. Homeowners can rent out their property when they are away on vacation, car owners can offer ride sharing services. These sharing economy business models are based on monetizing under-utilized infrastructure. They are enabled by peer-to-peer platforms that match eager sellers with willing buyers. Are there compelling sharing economy opportunities in the electricity sector? What products or services can be shared in tomorrow's Smart Grid? We begin by exploring sharing economy opportunities in the electricity sector, and discuss regulatory and technical obstacles to these opportunities. We then study the specific problem of a collection of firms sharing their electricity storage. We characterize equilibrium prices for shared storage in a spot market. We formulate storage investment decisions of the firms as a non-convex non-cooperative game. We show that under a mild alignment condition, a Nash equilibrium exists, it is unique, and it supports the social welfare. We discuss technology platforms necessary for the physical exchange of power, and market platforms necessary to trade electricity storage. We close with synthetic examples to illustrate our ideas.