“Trust” and “confidence” as socio-technical problems in the transformation of energy systems

Abstract

Background: For the development of a sustainable energy system, the public's contribution to the sustainment of the system's current operations will become vital. The public's role is expected to change from that of passive service abiders to active service providers, as anticipated by visions of prosumers, smart grids, demand side management, virtual power plants, and electric vehicle management. Smart technology and new business models will increase system complexity and the experience of uncertainty and risk for all parties. Actionability of the public's participation in the opportunities arising from the transformation of energy systems will become a problem. Methods: With a qualitative functionalist method, we analyze the prerequisites of the public's participation: the capacity of social mechanisms, such as trust, for the solution of social problems. Functional problems affect the continuation of communication, i.e., the possibility of the sustainment of social reality. We isolate three case studies that illustrate concrete effects of trust, distrust, and confidence on three parties, respectively: consumers, investors, and those affected by grid extensions. Results and conclusions: We argue that the social mechanisms of trust and confidence are more vital for consumers, investors, and those affected than previous research has noticed. These mechanisms determine the achievement of sustainability in energy systems by sustaining actionability as a favorable expectation (trust, confidence), or an unfavorable expectation (lack of trust, distrust). Even lack of trust and distrust can be valuable contributors on the road to sustainability, since they uncover flaws and setbacks of a fledgling smart grid.

Prosumer Communities and Relationships in Smart Grids: A Literature Review, Evolution and Future Directions

“…The energy value network enables consumers to transform into active prosumers and build strong relationships with other entities in the network [36]. The existing literature presents several methods that drive customer acceptance and engagement [36,73,[75][76][77][78][79]82]. Enablers of customer participation include-added comfort, energy independence, extended chance for electricity market participation, innovative control of appliances and devices, environmental benefits, economic incentives, energy bill reduction, clear and periodic billing, detailed information of energy consumption, enhanced energy supply reliability, and other social engagement factors [73].…”

“…Provider-consumer relationships [16,36,[60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] Consumer engagement [5,14,36,56,[73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82] Socio-Economic-technological aspect [18,28,46,74,76,80,81, This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 discusses the latest progress in the area of prosumer based smart grids focusing on prosumer communities and prosumer relationships. Section 3 outlines the future work and Section 4 concludes the paper.…”

Co-production in distributed generation: renewable energy and creating space for fitting infrastructure within landscapes

“…Trust and confidence are vital for consumers, investors and those affected by RES. Lack of trust decreases the proliferation of sustainable generation in energy systems (Büscher & Sumpf, 2015) and significantly hampers the progress of negotiations and participatory processes in RES (Friedl & Reichl, 2016). …”

Participatory Energy Transitions as Boundary Objects: The Case of Chile's Energía2050

“…The governance of any energy transition faces a dilemma: on the one hand, it must acknowledge the diversity, complexity and inherent adaptability of the system it strives to govern; on the other hand, it requires to achieve coordination, close down contingency, and fix long-term goals (Voss et al, 2009, 8). All socio-technical transitions imply to strike a balance between stability and change, confidence and surprise (Büscher and Sumpf, 2015); or in more general terms, autonomy and coherence (Willke, 2006).…”