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who more actively manage their electricity use. Consumers can track energy use through
metering and make electricity use decisions that could save money through dynamic
pricing that aligns the time-of-day price of generating electricity to its use. An additional
critical motivation is lower carbon and environmental emissions achieved through
incorporating renewable generation and more efficient use of electricity. Some visions of
smart grid also transform the oil-dependent transportation sector into another component
of the electric sector with the integration of electric vehicles. From a societal perspective,
smart grid also allows individuals and communities to ask new questions of the electric
system. Beyond system reliability and affordable cost, smart grid has potential to spur
social and behavioral change, including empowering individuals and communities to have
more localized control of and engagement in their energy choices. But, like change in
all complex systems, smart grid also poses multiple potential downsides, ranging from
increasing rather than decreasing costs and emissions to heightened concerns about
cybersecurity, privacy, and health.
Acknowledging this intriguing landscape, in this topic we explore both the social
and technological complexities of electricity system change. Recognizing that electricity
systems are composed of interlinked technologies, social practices, people, and
organizations, we investigate these relationships. In the first half of the topic we explore
the heterogeneity of smart grid by describing variation in its promises and pitfalls, its
technological configurations, and the actors and organizations involved in and influencing
how smarter electricity systems are developing. The second half of the topic moves
beyond these heterogeneities to compare specific aspects of smart grid development:
deployment of smart meters, integration of large-scale wind power in the electric system,
community-based small-scale grid innovations, and connections with climate change.
These latter chapters contextualize smart grid development through the exploration of
geographic and social heterogeneity in different places by focusing on the struggles
surrounding who has control and who benefits. By focusing on control, we are interested in
the dynamics of who, where, when, and how different system actors are able to shape the
electricity system. By focusing on perceived benefits of electricity system change, we are
interested in who, where, when, and how different system actors benefit from smart grid.
We explore the dynamic evolution of grid innovation, and we connect these changes with
larger societal issues.
We focus on the social dimensions of smart grid, and also explore how they interact with
the technological challenges. Our attention to the interactions between social and technical
developments is intentional; this topic is not a conventional engineering or technology
text. Several other recent topics and countless articles focus on the technologies of smart
grid, and in
Chapter 3
we will review the major categories of technologies that are often
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