Sharing economy meets energy markets: group purchasing of energy plans in retail energy markets

Competitive retail energy markets with selectable energy providers are increasingly common, allowing users to conveniently switch their energy plans from one energy provider to another. Meanwhile, group purchasing is a popular paradigm of sharing economy, enabling users to collectively gain better discounts through bulk buying activities. Thus, it is beneficial to apply the idea of group purchasing to competitive retail energy markets, such that users form a bargaining group to collectively switch among energy providers for discounted energy plans. In this paper, we explore the decision-making algorithms for enabling group purchasing of energy plans. In particular, we study an online decision-making scenario, where users form a coalition for group purchasing in energy markets without the knowledge of future energy plans and energy demands.