  Despite extensive research in the past five years and several successfully
completed and on-going pilot projects, regulators are still reluctant to
implement peer-to-peer trading at a large-scale in today's electricity market.
The reason could partly be attributed to the perceived disadvantage of current
market participants like retailers due to their exclusion from market
participation - a fundamental property of decentralised peer-to-peer trading.
As a consequence, recently, there has been growing pressure from energy service
providers in favour of retailers' participation in peer-to-peer trading.
However, the role of retailers in the peer-to-peer market is yet to be
established as no existing study has challenged this fundamental circumspection
of decentralized trading. In this context, this perspective takes the first
step to discuss the feasibility of retailers' involvement in the peer-to-peer
market. In doing so, we identify key characteristics of retail-based and
peer-to-peer electricity markets and discuss our viewpoint on how to
incorporate a single retailer in a peer-to-peer market without compromising the
fundamental decision-making characteristics of both markets. Finally, we give
an example of a hypothetical business model to demonstrate how a retailer can
be a part of a peer-to-peer market with a promise of collective benefits for
the participants.
