Learning from major smart grid projects

This strand of the research is investigating what learning has taken place from two large smart grid experiments in Australia: the federal government funded Smart Grid Smart City (SGSC) project, and the State of Victoria’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Program. Both SGSC and the AMI took place a few years ago, in the period 2009/10 to 2013/14. Now is therefore a perfect time to looking at what happened as a result, and in particular who learnt what.

The State of Victoria’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Program

My research on the Victorian AMI Program has involved interviews with key people from government, private sector and consumer groups/NGOs. I have completed 15 expert interviews, plus a review of relevant reports and media coverage. Findings have been published in academic papers in the journals Environment and Planning A (2017), Governance (2018), and Progress in Human Geography (2019). I have also presented on the case at seminars and conferences:

• 'Selective memory of past energy and climate policies: an assessment of two smart grid policy initiatives' (PDF 9.0 MB) The State of Energy Research Conference, Canberra, Australia, 3rd-4th July 2019.
• 'The promise of smart grids' (PDF 2.7 MB) American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, San Francisco, USA, March 29th-April 2nd 2016.
• 'How unsuccessful policies travel: the case of smart metering in the State of Victoria, Australia' (PDF 9.2 MB) invited seminar paper at the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, 22^nd September 2015.
• ‘The politics of Australian smart grid experiments’ University of Melbourne, School of Geography Seminar, 23^rd May 2017.
• RGS-IBG 2017 Conference - Co-convenor (with Vanesa Castan Broto) of a conference session on Energy Learning and Social Change, including a paper on the AMI Program, 29^th Aug-1^st Sept 2017.
• Plus a blog for the University of Canberra Space blog, October 2015 - '"We're not going to do it like Victoria"- Policy Learning from Other Places when Things Don't Go to Plan'

The AMI Program was a mandatory smart metering program, so all households and small businesses in the State of Victoria were fitted with a new digital ‘smart’ meter. But costs to households were high and not all the technologies worked as well as hoped for, particularly with regard to communication systems. The Victorian Auditor General investigated the Program twice – in 2009 and 2015 – and the new State government in 2010 openly called the AMI Program a failure.

The case is an interesting one because things did not quite work as planned. In the academic literature most case studies about policy experimentation and learning are about successes – the ‘best practice’ cases. The AMI Program provides an important counterbalance, because of how it was framed as a failure. Drawing on scholarship on policy mobilities, my paper in EPA (2017) uses the AMI Program to explore whether policy failures are mobile in the same way as policy successes. It brings in ideas from Science and Technology Studies to help understand the fragility and fragmentation of high-tech government projects such as the AMI, and the politics of framing an experiment as either a success or failure.

Smart Grid Smart City (SGSC)

My research on SGSC concentrates on the use of data and reports from the SGSC Information Clearing House – an online free resource where all the results from SGSC trials were uploaded. I have surveyed all the individuals and organisations (c1000) who registered to use the Information Clearing House. This online survey of registered users was conducted with the assistance of Ausgrid (the lead utility on SGSC) and the federal government. I have also interviewed around 20 survey participants to explore in more detail how they have (or have not) applied SGSC data and findings. These findings were presented to Ausgrid and the federal government in Sydney July 2017.

I have published one paper thus far on SGSC in Local Environment (2019) and am in the process of writing up the research for further academic publication, building on conference papers:

• ‘Energy feedback: Place, Policy and Mobility’ (PDF 3.9 MB) TEDDInet Workshop - Feedback in energy demand reduction: Examining evidence and exploring opportunities, Edinburgh, UK, 4^th-5^th July 2016; with co-author Gareth Powells, University of Newcastle.
• ‘The promise of smart grids’ (PDF 2.7 MB) American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, San Francisco, USA, March 29th-April 2nd 2016.

SGSC is an excellent case study for my research because of its explicit objectives around experimentation and learning. For example, the original federal government objectives of SGSC were to “Inform adoption of smart grid technologies across Australia” and “Develop an innovative solution that can serve as a global reference case.” (DEWHA, 2009 Smart Grid, Smart City: a new direction for a new energy era, p.16).