The discreet charm of activeness: the vain construction of efficient smart grid users

ABSTRACT Activeness is a key concept in smart grid visions, but little is known of what this activeness entails. By combing the literature on marketisation/performativity with critical consumption studies, we outline our findings from a case study of a smart grid project in Sweden. Using a mixed method methodology, we critically approach various tensions, doubts and frictions that occur in the process of constructing ‘activeness.’ For decades, the design of the Swedish energy system has been guided by assumptions that users base their actions on what is profitable and thus behave as calculative agents, and we found this assumption also acted as a guiding principle in this project. However, we encountered project employees who continuously pondered the appropriateness of configuring the smart grid around an economic cornerstone, and they hesitated when trying to explain how their configuration was aligned with the notion of activeness. By describing their scripted users as ‘passively active’ and ‘actively active,’ they seemed to cling to the notion of activeness while simultaneously stretching the actual meaning of this word. We conclude that these ambiguities in the configuration of the smart grid do not contribute to any sense of collective rule or environmentally friendly solutions.

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