Environmental Engineering Reference
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toward smart grid technologies and how they are responding and adapting to new social
expectations.
In addition to increased diversity in sources and scale of electricity generation, there is
increased diversity in ownership of assets. New opportunities are emerging for individuals,
businesses, and communities to participate differently in innovative electricity system
changes. Widespread deployment of distributed generation technologies offers enormous
potential to change asset ownership models. For example, solar companies such as
SolarCity are leasing solar panels on rooftops while maintaining ownership and risk,
facilitated by dropping solar PV prices and generous policy incentives. However, not
all new energy technologies make immediate economic sense or even produce much
electricity. The small-scale wind turbines being installed on high-rise buildings in New
York City are appealing to some, and while they may generate enough power to light the
building's hallways and lobby, they are viewed by others as largely ornamental signifiers
of “green values” designed primarily to make the buildings attractive to renters (Chaban
Although we acknowledge this diversity of smart grid and its potential futures, we are
not embracing an “all-of-the-above” smart grid strategy in the same way that the United
States has officially embraced an all-of-the-above energy strategy (Moniz
2013
). It is clear
that generic support for smart grid could be used to justify almost any kind of proposed
electricity system change. Given this diversity of smart grid futures and the interests of
societal actors involved in shaping electricity systems, we believe that stakeholders share
responsibilities to assess the operational, societal, and environmental consequences of
smart grid innovation.
With the hope of assisting smart grid actors in fulfilling this responsibility and
broadening their understanding of systemwide change, we have tried in this topic to
synthesizemultipleperspectiveswithoutprivilegingtheperspectivesorprioritiesofoneset
of actors over another. In our research and in our writing of this topic, we were not smart
grid advocates. We intentionally tried to maintain simultaneous skepticism and enthusiasm
about smart grid promises, while we were also cautious and concerned about the potential
pitfalls of smart grid. From all that we have learned over the past six years of research, we
do not have, or even agree upon, a singular vision of a smart grid future.
Although we recognize and embrace the diversity in smart grid futures, this topic
focuses on North America and Europe. By concentrating on northern hemisphere,
relatively wealthy countries with long-established electricity system infrastructure we were
able to delve deeply into specific and somewhat comparable examples. We realize that with
this focus we have left out some of the exciting smart grid advances occurring in the rest
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