The (still unexplored) social side of smart grid development

Abstract

Smart Grids interconnect stakeholders and technologies in the energy domain for the sake of enabling new ways of interacting within the energy system through the usage of information and communication technologies. However, the facilitation of new business models and competition in the energy domain is not purely a technological issue. Besides technological complexity, stakeholders with different knowledge, expertise, and methods are necessary for Smart Grid developments. This heterogeneity also results in specific social challenges. The industry-standard IEC 62559-2 leverages Use Cases for modelling the so-called Smart Grid Architecture Model (SGAM) to assess the technical interoperability and complexity of future energy systems. With its focus on ICT standardization and its implementation, it only implicitly considers involved stakeholders. However, social interaction and the underlying dynamics of power and knowledge exchange critically influence the development process. Therefore, we propose a social perspective in these collaborative development processes of SGAM with a focus on the stakeholders. For the modelling of social collaboration within the SGAM, we expand the proximity concept by Boschma (2005) to show the characteristics and the relations of stakeholders involved. Our research presents an additional 'Social Layer' for the SGAM to show the prevailing heterogeneity of the stakeholders and illustrates this with an empirical case study. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of stakeholder collaboration and its characteristics in the Smart Grid development processes. CCS CONCEPTS• Applied computing  Law, social and behavioral sciences  Sociology