Open AccessExtracting Users: Regimes of Engagement in Norwegian Smart Electricity Transition
Author(s) -
Kjetil Rommetveit,
Ingrid Foss Ballo,
Siddharth Sareen
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
science, technology and human values/science, technology, and human values
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.094
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1552-8251
pISSN - 0162-2439
DOI - 10.1177/01622439211052867
Subject(s) - conceptualization , smart grid , electricity , energy transition , legitimation , normative , sociotechnical system , business , sociology , environmental economics , computer science , knowledge management , economics , politics , political science , engineering , law , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology , artificial intelligence , electrical engineering , panacea (medicine)
Recent efforts to involve digital technologies and renewables in the electricity grid have placed users at center stage in the legitimation of energy transitions. This move has been paralleled by an emphasis on users and energy practices in social studies of energy related to science and technology studies. This article builds on an eighteen-month Living Lab exploration of energy practices with smart electricity users in Bergen, Norway. We make two interrelated arguments. First, energy production and distribution in Norway and elsewhere is shifting toward greater automation of tasks, possibly bypassing the “active user” concept. Energy sector practices are evolving from simply extracting natural resources (Extraction 1.0) toward extraction of users’ behavioral data (Extraction 2.0), and privacy thus emerges as a key component in the stabilization of energy systems. Second, we reflect on displacements of the roles and possibilities of users (or “energy citizens”) thereby enabled, especially their normative (political and regulatory) aspects. We propose that conceptualization of energy practices be supported by the concept of regimes of engagement from pragmatist sociology. Relatedly, we argue that market, civic, ecological, and industrial regimes are being actively merged through digital innovation and what we call the techno-epistemic network of smart electricity.