Forecasting the Electricity Demand and Market Shares in Retail Electricity Market Based on System Dynamics and Markov Chain

Due to the deregulation of retail electricity market, consumers can choose retail electric suppliers freely, and market entities are facing fierce competition because of the increasing number of new entrants. Under these circumstances, forecasting the changes in all market entities, when market share stabilized, is important for suppliers making marketing decisions. In this paper, a market share forecasting model was established based on Markov chain, and a system dynamics model was constructed to forecast the electricity consumption based on the analysis of five factors which are economic development, policy factors, environmental factors, power energy substitution, and power grid development. For a real application, the retail electricity market of Guangdong province in China was selected. The total, industrial, and commercial electricity consumption in Guangdong from 2016 to 2020 were predicted under different scenarios, and the market shares of the main market entities were analyzed using Markov chain model. Results indicated that the direct trading electricity would account for 70% to 90% of the total electricity consumption in the future. This provided valuable reference for the decision-making of suppliers and the development of electricity industry.