1. Inside Smart Homes and Workplaces
How are/will people react to the changing environment?

2. ‘Smartification’ and energy
• Background issue: the need to decarbonise energy
production, render energy more affordable, and
more secure (energy trilemma)
• Key question: where are opportunities & obstacles
relating to how people use energy?
• Smart homes: energy as central focus, with two
strategies
▫ Creating smart consumers through real-time
information
▫ Automating energy management
• Possible problems
▫ Insensitivity to constraining effect of social practices
▫ Insensitivity to biographical attachments to identities
and values
Source: Eonenergy.com

3. Smart metering and behaviour change
• 2015 Research for DECC by
Environmental Change Institute,
Oxford, the University of Ulster,
and the Tavistock Institute
• Key findings:
▫ Well-designed smart meters can
assist with noticeable behaviour
change
▫ But needs close support
▫ Also need to be used in particular
ways (‘monitoring’ not
‘information’

4. Embedded practices
• Practice theory
▫ Individual behaviour is
constrained by shared
practices
▫ Practices require particular
infrastructures
▫ They are associated with
cultural meanings
Shove and Southerton (2000) – energy
implications of freezers, microwaves, ready
meals
Convenience
Practices constrain behaviour by
making it easier or necessary to act
in certain ways

5. Energy Biographies: the
meaning of comfort
Pat: But no, we are not very green-
thinking people cos we use too much
heat [Neil chuckles]
Neil: We like to keep warm.
Pat: We do like to keep warm.
[…]
Pat: We do do short sleeves but we do
like to be comfortable.
Fiona: …Why do you prefer to have
the heating on rather than jumpers?
Neil: I think to sit indoors and not
have jumpers on, you know.
Pat: Just to be, to feel comfortable.
Neil: Just like to feel comfortable.
Pat: I hate to feel bunged up
Unintended outcomes of standardised design
• Ozaki & Shaw (2014): cultural
diversity in cooking practices
undermines smart ventilation
systems
• Against the illusion of the
‘universal home and user’-

6. Energy Biographies –case sites & methodology
• Funded by RCUK from 2011-2016
• EBs approach uses qualitative
longitudinal interviews (3 over 18
months) and visual methods
(participant photos/films)
• Can biographical stories of
lifecourse change make tangible
hidden aspects of how and why
people use energy in particular
ways?
▫ Past experiences
▫ Anticipated futures Lammas, West Wales
Royal Free Hospital
(RFH), London
Peterston, Cardiff
Ely, Cardiff

7. Reflecting on smart homes
3rd round interviews – films about everyday energy futures

8. Ambivalence about convenience (Groves et
al 2016)
‘We don’t think about it twice I mean
putting the microwave on or the kettle
on or the cooker on […] do I really need
to do this? You just kind of do it and
then even if you don’t drink the cup of
tea or you change your mind later the
kettle has boiled’
Monica (RFH)
‘Even if all the electricity was coming from
renewable, Green sources I think it would
still bug me a little bit because it’s the
heedlessness of it and the lack of
mindfulness and the […] just that, that kind
of carelessness of it all.
Jonathan (Peterston)
‘Like the fridge that re-orders […] I still
think it sort of dumbs us down as a kind
of society and replaces our you know
ingenuity and our thinking, free thinking
with controlled you know thinking and
you know computerisation of everything.’
Dennis (RFH)
‘And the heat pump we are getting is a smart heat
pump which it can activate, it can close the
windows for you; it can turn the microwave on. It’s
got that whole thing. We can’t imagine using any of
those facilities at all … In that sense the dream is
not really sold to me any more […] it’s well
documented that convenience has not really
brought more wellbeing. So modern life, for all its
convenience, we now see more people working
longer hours and all that stuff. .’
Rachel (Ely)

9. Smart living, fragility and control
‘[talking about Ch4 film]
all the gadgets I mean that
was you know similar to
the bloody [Monsanto]
house you know you’re
hungry and the electricity
is down and you can’t, you
know you can’t have a
shower because you can’t
turn on the tap you know!’
Vanessa (Lammas)
‘a log fire’s is quite homely but obviously they
didn’t picture that in the future because its
hard work making a log fire whereas they just
press a button and they’ve got warmth or
coolness or you know whatever they needed.’
Sarah (RFH)
‘Yeah but I don’t like [gas central heating]. I look back
and I think actually I see for me how I had no
connection with it […] whereas when the wood’s there
and you see the fire going you think maybe I’ll just turn
the fire down cos the pile of wood is shrinking. [With
central heating] there’s no connection with the fuel that
is actually being burned to produce this heat.
Emmanuelle (Lammas)

10. Energy biographies and smart futures –
key points
• Technologies and social practices interact – sometimes in
very unexpected ways
• People’s personal and interpersonal attachments shape
how they interact – sometimes subversively – with
technologies
• Qualitative narrative interviews can help explore these
potential interactions
• By linking biographical pasts and anticipated futures they
create opportunities for people to reflect on how energy
matters to them
• This offers opportunities for them to reflect on desirability
and viability of potential futures (like a ‘smart society’)

11. Sunday 5th
February
2017
Kabir Dhawan, resident of New
Capital Quay, London (heating
managed by e.on)
[© Guardian Media Group 2017]
“Any company – including
the property developer –
can set itself up as a
District Heating supplier
without a licence, and a full
list of those in operation is
not yet publicly available.”
“Using e.on’s own
estimates of consumption
for a one-bed flat, he
reckons that he is paying
twice what he should for
heat and hot water.”
“Dhawan fears that he
will struggle to sell or let
his flat because of the
high costs and the
service is a monopoly.”

12. From Energy Biographies to FLEXIS
• Engineering-social science research consortium in
Wales
• Revisiting “stories of change” to understand
potential social impacts of energy system transitions
• Socio-technical focus – expert imaginaries and
effects of interventions in everyday homes, plus
siting/risk controversies
• Planned work around district heating in
Caerau and TATA steel

13. Key references
• Shove, E., and Dale Southerton. 2000. “Defrosting the Freezer: From
Novelty to Convenience: A Narrative of Normalization.” Journal of
Material Culture 5 (3): 301–19.
• Groves, C., K. Henwood, F. Shirani, C. Butler, K. Parkhill, and N. Pidgeon.
2016. “The Grit in the Oyster: Using Energy Biographies to Question Socio-
Technical Imaginaries of ‘smartness.’” Journal of Responsible Innovation
3(1) 4–25.
• Groves, C., K. Henwood, C. Butler, K. A. Parkhill, F. Shirani, and N. Pidgeon
(2015). “Energy Biographies: Narrative Genres, Lifecourse Transitions and
Practice Change.” Science, Technology & Human Values 41 (3): 483–508.
• Groves, C., K. Henwood, C. Butler, K. A. Parkhill, F. Shirani, and N. Pidgeon
(2016). “Invested in Unsustainability? On the Psychosocial Patterning of
Engagement in Practices.” Environmental Values 25 (3): 309–328.
• Energy Biographies Research Report – online at
http://energybiographies.org/our-work/our-findings/reports/