New decentralized energy-generation technologies have turned economies of scale upside down while becoming more economically viable. At the same time, the increased penetration of information technologies has led to new opportunities to manage infrastructure in a less hierarchical, more flexible way. Together with citizen demands for control over energy, these two converging trends has put energy communities (ECs) on the agenda, potentially advancing the transition towards more sustainable energy systems, despite hindrances encountered on the way. This paper presents a case study of the planning process of a sustainable city district in Sweden, using participatory observations and interviews conducted with included stakeholders. We analyse how the included stakeholders has reasoned about establishing a sustainable energy system in the area, including a microgrid. The discussions on a microgrid comprised two parallel discourses, coexisting but seldomly explicitly confronted. The distribution system operator in the area promoted a distributed energy system (DES) solution, while the property developers opted for a microgrid organized more as a citizen energy community (CEC). We discuss why the CEC proponents so far has lost the battle of creating a community owned smart grid. We conclude that the different models, a DES and a CEC, comprise different values and an increased focus on energy communities could shift the transition pathway towards a more decentralized system involving other prioritise than just economical.

Background Smart technologies, such as smart grids, are emerging as indispensable aspects of an energy transformation and come with hopes of more sustainable resource use. A substantial amount of research has examined the technical, economic, and environmental implications of these technologies, but less attention has been paid to their social aspects. For the smart grid projects to be realised, studies that include the actors who are supposed to implement the visions are needed. Results A semi-structured literature review was conducted to investigate the state of social science literature on smart grids and identify the main research avenues and research gaps by addressing a broad research question: “What kind of knowledge is produced in social science studies on smart grids?” We retrieved peer-reviewed articles from the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases up until 2022 and mapped them in terms of features such as topic, design, method, and theory. Conclusions We found that knowledge development in social science studies on smart grids followed a pattern where most research focused on visions; professionals and users; and smart technologies in homes with a geographical focus on Europe or the USA. We identified six research gaps related to an overly vague definition of the smart grid and the need to include more diverse actors and geographical places to advance our understanding of the smart grid. There is also a lack of studies relating to energy democracy, the resistance of smart grids and the centralised–decentralised nexus of the smart grid. These less studied areas can bring in new knowledge that enhances a deployment of a smart grids supporting not only technological development, but also society and users.

BackgroundNew decentralized energy-generation technologies have turned economies of scale upside down while becoming more economically viable. The increased penetration of information technologies has led to new opportunities to manage infrastructure in a less hierarchical, more flexible way. Together with citizen demands for control over energy, this has put energy communities (ECs) on the agenda, potentially advancing the transition towards more sustainable energy systems, despite hindrances encountered on the way.This paper presents a case from Sweden, using participatory observations and interviews conducted during the planning of a sustainable city district built around sharing. We examined the discussions between stakeholders concerning smart energy systems and the establishment of a microgrid.ResultsWe found that the discussions of the microgrid comprised two parallel discourses, coexisting but seldomly explicitly confronted. The distribution system operator in the area promoted its solutions, while the property developers opted for a microgrid organized more as an EC. We discuss why the EC proponents apparently lost the battle in this smart grid case.ConclusionsThis paper described the energy planning process in a case study in Sweden, where two different models for building an electric microgrid can be identified: distributed energy systems and energy community perspectives. We suggest that these perspectives have different values. We conclude that interest in microgrids could shift the transition pathway towards a more decentralized system involving a variety of owners.