Emerging Smart Grid Struggles - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 8

tensions, coalitions, and inherent power struggles in creating the future electricity system.
These tensions include incumbents versus new actors, perceived costs versus benefits, and
questions of who pays, who plays, and who writes the rules. Questions of the timescales
and the spatial scales over which costs and benefits are to be distributed come to the
fore. Another set of tensions relates to actors' perceptions on whether smart grid should be
oriented toward promoting a more centralized or a more decentralized electricity system,
and/or whether both centralization and decentralization can and should be promoted
simultaneously.
Another key tension in smart grid development relates to whether smart grid technology
empowers consumers with more autonomy and control to manage their energy systems,
or whether smart grid changes could result in disempowerment through a loss of privacy
and control by individual households and electricity consumers. At this point it seems
like smart grid could contribute to either and both - a more centralized electricity system
and/or a more decentralized system; more opportunities for customer involvement in
the energy system, or less. Other key tensions include whether a smarter grid would
provide enhanced security to our current system or create new vulnerabilities for potential
cyberattacksonthegrid,andwhetherasmartergridwillaccelerateareductioninfossilfuel
reliance by facilitating more renewables or whether fossil fuels will remain dominant and
influence smart grid development in such a way that smart grid investments contribute to
perpetuating fossil fuel dependence. Of course, the dichotomies are neither straightforward
nor clearcut, as the case studies included in this topic illustrate. Smart grid could enable
increased renewables and an increase in coal use, as is the current situation in Germany.
Smart grid could allow for distributed generation to enhance system reliability through the
creation of microgrids and unintentionally exacerbate local air pollution. Smart meters and
dynamic pricing could lower consumer costs for ten months out of the year and create
a public (and political) revolt when high prices are passed on to unwilling electricity
customers in an effort to link the price of electricity production and consumption during
the peak summer months. We find the study of smart grid so interesting because the
circumstances are rarely black and white, but rather marbled, shaded, and embedded within
specific contexts.
An emerging struggle in many regions relates to how and to what degree solar PV
owners should pay to maintain the distribution network. Homes and businesses with their
own onsite solar electricity generation still rely on and benefit from being connected to the
larger grid. When the sun does not shine these systems do not produce power. Unless the
owners have invested in battery storage, they are dependent on purchased electricity for the
hours in which the sun does not shine. They are also dependent on the larger grid to take
any excess generated power that they do not use on-site. But how and to what degree these