A Social Practice Perspective on Smart Grids Summary of workshop at ICT4S 2014 Cecilia Katzeff Annelise de Jong Interactive Institute Swedish ICT Interactive Institute Swedish ICT Eskilstuna, Sweden Kista, Sweden cecilia.katzeff@tii.se annelise@tii.se Centre for Sustainable Communications CESC, KTH Royal Delft University of Technology, Industrial Design, Institute of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands Stockholm, Sweden Abstract—This is a summary of the workshop that was held as part of the ICT4S conference with a focus on the topic of social II. PAPER SUMMARIES practices and smart grids. Here we present an overview of the Two of the papers focus on actor perspectives on the smart five invited paper contributions to the workshop, as well as a grid. Bartusch and Perna’s paper ”Key actor perspectives on summary of the plenary discussion, and our final conclusions. Keywords—sustainability; ICT; social practice theory; smart grid; design I. INTRODUCTION Today citizens are being ascribed increasingly (re)active roles in sustainable development, as captured in concepts such as ‘prosumers’. As prosumers, citizens are often still subordinated to larger and top-down socio-technical agendas, such as local energy production and ‘load management’ in smart grid districts. Further, the effects of such agendas are often unrealized, partly due to an underestimation of the power and complexity of social practices and partly because ‘lock-ins’ and ‘rebound effects’ in consumption habits continue to counter efficiency gains. A social practice perspective may open up new opportunities for understanding and potentially change Figure 1. Workshop participants at the introduction on everyday practices in a sustainable direction. The perspective social practices and smart grids entails that human actions are viewed as part of an ecological system rather than isolated phenomena. They are considered as smart grids: A qualitative study on barriers and incentives for part of a whole. This may facilitate for a reformulation of the the development of smart grids in the Swedish power market” commonly posed question “How may we change people’s poses the research question as to how different actors perceive behaviour?” to more fruitful formulations in terms of the smart grid. The authors present an exploratory study relationships and dependencies between for instance everyday aiming to assess the motivations and incentives of key actors practices and electricity companies. in order to identify potential barriers and opportunities - The workshop had three major goals: To identify research financial, technological, political and psychological - when directions and researchers within the field of social practices smart grids are implemented. Theories of technological and smart grids; to build a community around the research field development and industrial networks are applied to analyze and to plan for subsequent workshops. During the three-hour the results. A preliminary analysis concludes that the financial workshop an introduction to the topic and goal of the workshop dimension constitutes the greatest barrier, mainly because of was presented by us, followed by presentations of the five the electricity price level and monetary flows from financial position papers. Then, we facilitated a general discussion, and investments. finally future plans were decided upon. In total 11 researchers from Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and the UK Another focus on actors is presented in the paper ”Social participated in the workshop (Figure 1). practice theory on tour: Venturing beyond household aspects of smart grids”. Here, Langendahl, Cook and Potter argue that reducing smart grid ecologies to everyday household practices Then the discussion arose how to work with Social may limit the potential of practice theory to understand Practice Theory as a way of looking at existing situations and development of smart grids. In their paper they, thus, explore understanding the complexity of changing those situations, but the potential of practice theory to account for practices not to change or transform consumers in a way that is more performed by actors associated with smart grids beyond desirable or compatible with Smart grid functionalities. Here, households. a challenge was seen to work with this theory in a way that does justice to its ideas. This forms a new breeding ground for Kortuem, Bourgois, Van der Linden and Price’s paper future work, our network, and new conference discussions to “Participatory Data Analysis: A New Method for Investigating be shaped and nourished. Human Energy Practices” describes a method for enabling people to reflect on their own behavior. In the method also lies IV. CONCLUSIONS an ambition to gain insight into factors that influence people’s The workshop created a forum for knowledge behavior. The paper shows examples of how the method could sharing, lively discussion, and plans for further research be applied. In his paper “The role of learning and social exchange. An embryo for a European community around the interaction for changing practices?”, Christensen attempts to research field of a social practice perspective of smart grids combine social practice theory with Kolb’s theory of was formed. The paper presentations and discussion presented experiential learning. The aim is to inspire to further thinking a variety of different viewpoints and methods that cast a about how to make practice theory more “applicable” for different, albeit diffused, light on smart grids and actor designing changes towards a low-carbon energy system. perspectives. The wish for continuous research exchange was demonstrated by the joint request of the members of the group Finally, “Multidisciplinary smart Grid research and the to continue the discussion forum through growing the network design of users” by Gaye and Wallenborn, has a user- and and extending the workshop to a new session in ICT4S 2015. design-oriented perspective on the smart grid. The paper argues that users can be “designed” as interested in and open V. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT to devices that concern them. They criticize the notion of users The organizers of the workshop wish to acknowledge all as passive consumers and through the use of the social the participants. Thanks to Elina Ericsson, Cajsa Bartusch and practice framework they describe how energy may be Andrea Perna for extra efforts on short notice. redefined in a way, which also gives a new configuration of the grid. VI. WORKSHOP PAPERS III. DISCUSSION [1] C. Bartusch, and A. Perna, “Key actor perspectives on smart gridsA The discussion started off with the observation qualitative study on barriers and incentives for the development of smart triggered by the papers on actor perspectives that there are grids in the Swedish power market”. many different actors involved and consequently various actor [2] T.H. Christensen, “The role of learning and social interaction for changing practices?” perspectives on smart grid developments that do not necessary [3] G. Gaye, and G. Wallenborn, “Multidisciplinary smart Grid research and coincide. This contributes to the complexity of the the design of users” development of smart grids and also indicates the need for a [4] G. Kortuem, J. Bourgois, J. van der Linden and B. Price, “Participatory multidisciplinary approach. Questions arose as to how the Data Analysis: A New Method for Investigating Human Energy various actor perspectives can be nurtured in a good way, and Practices” which can be beneficial for society. [5] P.A. Langendahl, M. Cook and S. Potter, ”Social practice theory on tour: Venturing beyond household aspects of smart grids”. One viewpoint arising from the papers on learning processes could be to take such processes as a guideline for working with smart grids rather than implementing technocratic developments in society. However, this learning process takes place on all levels and is not systemized or synchronized. This calls for theories such as Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Science and Technology Studies (STS), but the performative character of learning processes may be more appropriately addressed through Social Practice Theory. Social Practice Theory could help in analysing and understanding how such learning processes take place for different actors by studying the actual performance of such learning activities in relation to smart grids, in order to understand various actor perspectives better.