Nick Verkade

The transition to a low-carbon energy system goes along with changing roles for citizens in energy production and consumption. In this paper we focus on how residential energy storage technologies can enable householders to contribute to the energy transition. Drawing on literature that understands energy systems as sociotechnical configurations and the theory of ‘material participation’, we examine how the introduction of home batteries affords new roles and energy practices for householders. We present qualitative findings from interviews with householders and other key stakeholders engaged in using or implementing battery storage at household and community level. Our results point to five emerging storage modes in which householders can play a role: individual energy autonomy; local energy community; smart grid integration; virtual energy community; and electricity market integration. We argue that for householders, these storage modes facilitate new energy practices such as providing grid services, trading, self-consumption, and sharing of energy. Several of the storage modes enable the formation of prosumer collectives and change relationships with other actors in the energy system. We conclude by discussing how householders also face new dependencies on information technologies and intermediary actors to organize the multi-directional energy flows which battery systems unleash. With energy storage projects currently being provider-driven, we argue that more space should be given to experimentation with (mixed modes of) energy storage that both empower householders and communities in the pursuit of their own sustainability aspirations and serve the needs of emerging renewable energy-based energy systems.

Civic energy communities (CECs) have emerged throughout Europe in recent years, developing a range of activities to promote, generate, and manage renewable energy within the community. Building on theories of Social Practice, we develop the notion of Collective Energy Practice to account for the activity of CECs. This expands the practice-based understanding of energy, which thus far has mostly focused on energy practices of the home. Additionally, we build on earlier practice-based thinking to come to our understanding of a ‘system of energy practices’. This view places the collective energy practices of CECs in a broader mesh of sites of practice, including policymaking, commercial activity, and grid management. Taking account of the enabling and/or restricting the influence of this broad system of energy practices is crucial in understanding the development of CECs’ practices. We accomplish this through the qualitative analysis of our long-term empirical research of five Dutch CEC sites, but also draw on our earlier fieldwork on smart grid projects in the Netherlands.