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

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.