Energy Resellers - An Endangered Species?

Many markets, including the travel, music, and book markets, are undergoing dramatic changes due do the development of electronic commerce. Reseller margins often decrease significantly and sometimes even entire links in the supply chain are becoming completely superfluous. Even though power markets have been deregulated already for some years in many countries, electronic commerce has not yet had a major impact on the business logic. This paper presents some of the major obstacles to electronic power trade, and presents promising solutions to these obstacles. In particular it is described how software agent mediated trade may enable medium and small size consumers and producers to trade directly from power pools, without the need of traditional energy resellers. The conclusion that is there are good reasons to believe that energy resellers are as threatened in the new information era as, e.g., traditional travel agencies, and music and book-shops are.