Management of local Citizen Energy Communities and Bilateral Contracting in Multi-Agent Electricity Markets

Over the last few decades, the electricity sector has experienced several changes, resulting in different electricity markets (EMs) models and paradigms. In particular, liberalization has led to the establishment of a wholesale market for electricity generation and a retail market for electricity retailing. In competitive EMs, customers can do the following: freely choose their electricity suppliers; invest in variable renewable energy such as solar photovoltaic; become prosumers; or form local alliances such as Citizen Energy Communities (CECs). Trading of electricity can be done in spot and derivatives markets, or by bilateral contracts. This article focuses on CECs. Specifically, it presents how agent-based local consumers can form alliances as CECs, manage their resources, and trade on EMs. It also presents a review of how agent-based systems can model and support the formation and interaction of alliances in the electricity sector. The CEC can trade electricity directly with sellers through private bilateral agreements. During the negotiation of private bilateral contracts, the CEC receives the prices and volumes of their members and according to its negotiation strategy, tries to satisfy the electricity demands of all members and reduce their costs for electricity.

3. Offer and acceptance: bilateral contracts

This chapter analyses the key elements traditionally required for the formation of a bilateral contract. Contracts are bargains. The natural way to make a bargain is for one side to propose the terms and the other to agree to them. So contracts are almost invariably made by a process of offer and acceptance. However, the lack of offer and acceptance does not necessarily preclude the existence of a contract, if a bargain can be discerned from the facts in some other way. The chapter begins by explaining what constitutes an offer, and discusses various common scenarios. It then examines the requirements of acceptance, since this is what is required for a contract to be concluded. It considers the possibilities that an offer might be revoked by the offeror; or rejected by the offeree; or the offeree might ask for further information; or the offer might lapse.

Role of Option of Defect in Tenders: A Study under Omani Law

Option of defect is an important theory regulated in Omani Civil Law. It gives the injured party in bilateral contracts an option to rescind the contract if they find a defect in the subject matter of the contract. This theory is deemed a legal basis to refuse objects of sale by tender. In particular, it is useful when a guarantee that is given to the governmental body is insufficient to cover damages, due to bad performance of the contract. This article discusses how the option of defect is applied to sale by tender in Omani law.

Chain stability in trading networks

In a general model of trading networks with bilateral contracts, we propose a suitably adapted chain stability concept that plays the same role as pairwise stability in two‐sided settings. We show that chain stability is equivalent to stability if all agents' preferences are jointly fully substitutable and satisfy the Laws of Aggregate Supply and Demand. In the special case of trading networks with transferable utility, an outcome is consistent with competitive equilibrium if and only if it is chain stable.

Patents, Charters, and Certificates: What Preceded the Enlistment of Foreign Nationals into the Russian Service by Contract?

This article considers the genesis of contractual relations between the Russian state and individuals, more particularly, international specialists. The author traces the similarities, interconnections, and differences between bilateral contracts with reciprocal rights and obligations and other acts totally or partially devoid of synallagmatic features (i. e. legal attributes of reciprocal agreements). The sources referred to include contracts concluded with foreign nationals, “capitulations” (“conditions of service”, which were not full contracts in terms of form yet), and various acts created in the process of recruitment or presented by foreigners during the enlistment procedure, such as patents, charters (Rus. zastupitel’nyye “intercessions”, confirming qualification, and Rus. proyezzhiye “passing” charters, etc.), and certificates (Rus. svidetel’stvovannye pasy, “certificate passes”, Rus. svidetel’stvovannye pis’ma “certificate letters”). Chronologically, the paper covers the epoch of Peter the Great, because contracts became the key form of hiring international specialists at the time, though their form was still unstable. The author reveals the characteristics of patents granted to international specialists, determines their differences from traditional “rank patents”, and shows the features that make foreigners’ patents similar to service contracts. In general, this type of source represents a rank granted by the sovereign, not a bilateral contract. At the same time, patents contain an indirect synallagmatic bond realised through structural elements about Russian obligations to foreigners (for example, concerning the amount of money to be paid). Source study analysis of the charters and certificates granted by European monarchs and presented by foreigners in the Ambassadorial Prikaz demonstrate that such acts were used by Russian administrators as examples for drawing up contracts and documents while recruiting international personnel. On the one hand, the synallagmatic bond, which usually determines the essence of a contract, was absent or insufficiently developed in some letters of grant. However, a number of texts do have features indicating the reciprocity of rights and obligations, which allows us to consider them possible prototypes of contracts. The Russian contract incorporated the properties and features of various acts of Russian and, to a greater extent, Western European origin.