Four-party evolutionary game analysis in renewable energy integration within retail electricity markets

As the sales side of China's electricity sector becomes independent and power trading centers are established, the electricity market, serving as the platform for power transactions, plays a critical role in the competitive framework of the energy industry. However, in the evolving electricity market, how to balance the interest and demands of various participants and create a reasonable competitive mechanism remains a crucial issue in the ongoing power sector reform. In light of the power retail companies' role as a bridge between power generation enterprises (PGEs) and end users, this paper constructs a four-way evolutionary game model involving power retail companies, PGEs, electricity users (EUs), and the government. The initial values of the model result in the following optimal strategy set: PGEs opt for renewable energy generation, retail companies choose to cooperate with power generators for electricity sales, the government opts not to provide subsidies, and EUs select traditional energy consumption. Model simulation analyzes the impact of a retail company's cooperative sales revenue, purchase costs, subsidies, revenue distribution ratio, and competitive market share. The results show that rising purchase costs shift retail companies from widespread cooperation to full competition. Similarly, higher cooperative sales revenue accelerates the stabilization of electricity users' strategies, though not their ultimate preference for traditional energy. Moreover, a higher revenue share promotes convergence toward cooperative strategies, whereas a larger competitive market share hinders it.