Smart Grids Messy Society is a research project conducted by Professor Heather Lovell at the University of Tasmania, Australia, and funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), under their Future Fellowships Programme (2015-20; FT140100646). This project ran from 2015-2020 and has now finished.
The Smart Grids Messy Society research project further developed our understanding of the impact of large scale smart grid policy and technology experiments. By studying the ongoing impact of Australian smart grid experiments several years later - something that is rarely done as part of standard government evaluation processes - the research revealed how learning occurred over time. Key research findings included: the critical influence of international smart grid experiments on decisions in Australia, the role of the electricity meter as a 'boundary object' that mediates between competing interests, and how learning is constrained in cases of policy failure.
In these project webpages you can find a summary of the project outputs, and a detailed description of the different project research workstreams. Please email me at Heather.Lovell@utas.edu.au if you have any queries or comments on the research.
Background
What are smart grids? Utility infrastructures are largely unaltered since first installed 100 years ago, and new information technologies have the potential to catalyse significant innovation. Smart grids are about the use of these new information technologies and capabilities – such as digital, communications-enabled meters – within utility infrastructures, most typically electricity.
Defining a smart grid: "Our national electricity system is like an old car. It works, but could be more efficient, and is sometimes unreliable. Like a modern car, a smart grid conducts regular checks to make the electricity system work smarter and better, reducing running costs in the long term and responding to changing conditions and emergency situations." Australian Government (2010) (PDF 61.3KB)
Why research smart grids? Smart grids have the potential to make traditional utilities radically more responsive and efficient, but their implementation is challenged by the realities of a complex messy society. This research on Australia's world-leading smart grid experiments was about improving our understanding of how, why and where successful innovation and learning occurs.
The two main aims of the research were: 1) to investigate the societal drivers for, and implications of, smart grids; 2) to assess how smart grid implementation varies from place to place, and the implications of this for theories and practices of innovation and learning.
Professor Heather Lovell is an interdisciplinary social scientist (human geographer, sociologist) with research interests in the topics of energy, climate change and the environment. She is from the UK, with a PhD from Cambridge University, and was based in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh prior to joining UTAS in early 2015. Further details on Heather's expertise and experience can be found at Heather Lovell.