Societal Actors and Dominant Smart Grid Visions - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 91

to take advantage of energy management. People consume electricity to fulfill and engage
in a wide variety of societal activities. Residential comfort (heating, cooling, lighting)
and function (cooking, bathing, watching TV, or gaming), commercial business use, and
industrial production of goods all drive electricity consumption. Electricity is an enabling
service that allows people to engage in other practices and functions, and electricity
consumers need reliable, affordable energy to fulfill these needs. Some consumers are
concerned about the environmental impacts of electricity generation and their electricity
use, while others care more about the cost of service. How much electricity is consumed
and how it is consumed varies across country, region, sector, city, and individual.
Electricity use changes over time and varies across cultures, which means that smart grid
has the potential to fulfill different functions for electricity consumers in different places.
While consumer interest in smart grid is often distilled by technical experts and
economists into a “low-cost and reliable service,” several important factors affect smart
grid's salience to consumers (Cotton and Devine-Wright 2012 ). First, consumers use
electricity differently andhavedifferentabilities toshiftusagepatterns. Second,consumers
use electricity to power things which are embedded in complex social practices. Third,
concerns about privacy or desires for more environmentally friendly power (either
self-generated by prosumers or centrally supplied) also shape consumer visions of an
“ideal” electricity system. These factors could change the scope of consumer control and
interaction with the grid. Previously consumers could control their use by conserving
energy or installing energy-efficient devices. With smart grid, consumers might have the
option of actively managing their energy use profile, producing electricity from a variety
of different sources, and using or selling this electricity back to the grid. Ways in which
emergingsmartgridtechnologieswillinteractwithandshapeconsumerelectricityuse(and
how changing consumer/citizen priorities will shape smart grid development) are rapidly
evolving. As smart grid develops it is important to consider that energy consumption
remains linked to institutional incentives, evolving cultural trends, and social practices.
4.4.1 Residential Sector: Householders and Individuals
People use energy to do things; having access to electricity is not an end in itself. Elizabeth
Shove has written extensively on how attitudes, behavior and choice shape interconnected
societal practices which, in turn, shape energy use (Shove et al. 2007 , Shove 2010 ) .
Shove emphasizes that people engaged in social practices use things like refrigerators,
electric razors, cell phones, and televisions, not energy. For example, societal attitudes
toward cleanliness shape the frequency of bathing, which in turn shapes energy used to
supply, heat, and dispose of water (Shove 2004 ) . Shove also discusses how cultures shape
energy use. People eat at different times across cultures and this “social synchronization of