Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (Department of Economics and Management Institute of Information Systems and Marketing (IISM)), course: Information & Market Engineering, language: English, abstract: The changes taking place in the energy sector, the transition towards smart grids and an increasing share of distributed renewable energy sources generate the need for new market designs as well as new business models on the level of distribution grids. This work applies the market engineering framework to markets in smart distribution grids. Based on this structure, the most vital aspects of local markets in smart grids are examined. First, a systematic overview of important research approaches in the respective fields is given. Second, intermediaries are seen as markets engineers in their own one-sided market. This allows to further integrate related existing industry projects into the analysis. Thus, the relevance and practicability of the research and the value of the market engineering framework for local power markets is shown.