Information Management in Smart Grids - the need for decentralized governance approaches

Marius Buchmann

No 25, Bremen Energy Working Papers from Bremen Energy Research

Abstract: Information management secures the efficient exchange of data (e.g. from smart metering) in smart grids. Currently, national as well as regional information management systems are being developed. We discuss how the size of an information management system, i.e. the region covered by and the number of users connected to it, has an influence on the level of innovation in the process of the data exchange. Based on insights from the theory of fiscal federalism we argue that neither of the extremes of national (central) and decentralized governance approaches for information management will be optimal. We discuss how the market can determine the optimal degree of decentralization. If information management shall enable smart grids, then we show that the network operator needs to be able to incentivize network users to join and participate in an information management system to internalize externalities. Then, the size of the governance of information management systems will be linked to the network areas on the distribution grid level.

Keywords: Smart Grid; Information Management; data exchange; fiscal federalism; size (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L12 L51 L94 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as "The Need for Competition between Decentralized Governance Approaches for Data Exchange in Smart Electricity Grids - Fiscal Federalism vs. Polycentric Governance", in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 139, 106-117

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2017.05.011 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bei:00bewp:0025

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bremen Energy Working Papers from Bremen Energy Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anna Pechan ().