Smart Grid (R)evolution - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 216

smart grid conversations will advance collaborative thinking and engagement on the social
implications of electricity system change.
9.2 Encouraging a Sociotechnical Systems Perspective on Smart
Grid
Power outages of any kind, whether they are multiple-day blackouts like the disruptions
following Superstorm Sandy or shorter outages of just a few hours, remind us how the flow
of electricity influences our communication, our culture, and our communities. Despite
generalawarenessofthesocialimplicationsofenergy,manystillthinkofelectricitysystem
change in mostly technical and economic terms. Smart grid, with all its social complexity,
provides an opportunity to refocus and expand beyond this narrow technical-economic
lens. When we expand this lens we see that some strands of smart grid conversations echo
Amory Lovins' 1977 notion of soft energy paths that integrate evolving and malleable
societal needs into energy planning to encourage systems that are flexible, responsive,
benign, and sustainable (Lovins 1977 ). With a broader lens we also see that smart grid
offers a path toward Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, where energy use data can become
another tool for constant surveillance tracking our activities and movements, and mapping
our desires (Bentham 1995 ). Our review of the multiple promises and pitfalls of smart grid
in Chapter 2 highlights the diversity of perspectives and perceived social implications of
smart grid. Both positive and negative possibilities of smart grid can be envisioned when
smart grid is considered as part of a larger and ever-changing sociotechnical system.
Thetendencytoviewelectricitysystemsthroughapurelytechnical-economic lensoften
obfuscates the larger societal dimensions of these systems. Too often consideration of
electricity system change is delegated to engineers and economists, who work within a
narrow focus and are trained to limit their analysis to physical practicalities and economic
costs of technical systems. With this topic we have attempted to widen this focus to
incorporate nontechnical conversations about the social dimensions of smart grid.
Throughout the topic we have acknowledged that smart grid embodies different kinds of
changes for different people; it is a term with multiple simultaneous meanings. For some,
smart grid signifies a technological nirvana, a bucolic end-state where happy people will
drive their electric cars past wind turbines while taking deep breaths of clean air. For others
it is an empty signifier, a term so broad and vague as to be meaningless. For some, it means
incremental improvements to maintain the status quo, yet for others it has become part of
a revolutionary social movement; part of a larger effort to redistribute power and control
and counter growing disparities between rich and poor. Just as there are different kinds of
human intelligence (social intelligence, mathematical intelligence, emotional intelligence),