Towards Social Understanding of Energy Storage Systems—A Perspective
Maurizio Sibilla (maurizio.sibilla@uwe.ac.uk) and
Esra Kurul
Additional contact information
Maurizio Sibilla: Centre for Architecture and Built Environment Research, University of West of England, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK
Esra Kurul: School of the Built Environment, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK
Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 19, 1-11
Abstract:
Renewable, decentralised, and citizen-centred energy paradigms have emerged as feasible and reliable alternatives to the traditional centralised fossil-based infrastructure. In this scenario, energy storage systems (ESSs) are enabling technologies to boost the stability and flexibility of the power grid in the short-to-medium term, allowing local communities to envision energy autonomy in the medium term. Traditionally, ESSs have been installed in individual households for their own benefit. However, new storage paradigms focusing on building clusters and district scale have illustrated the need to revise the role of ESSs and to pay close attention to the social factors, while devising implementation strategies for scaling up these new energy infrastructural models. This study reviews recent research trends (2021–2023), proposing three integrated social pillars for the implementation of ESSs: (i) multi-dimensional geographical and institutional scales of ESSs; (ii) social components of spatial and temporal flexibility of ESSs; and (iii) co-creation approaches to devising ESS implementation strategies. These pillars point out the necessary social factors for the implementation of ESSs at scale, highlighting future research perspectives to operationalise such factors, with a particular focus on the importance of citizens’ perception, participation, and collaboration, which are critical for maximising the benefit of sharing and exchanging renewable energy locally. Development of flexible and agile digital platforms that facilitate the co-creation of adaptable socio-technical solutions to adopting ESSs is proposed. The need to tailor these solutions to suit the stakeholders’ capabilities is emphasized.
Keywords: energy storage systems; socio-technical systems; social understanding; spatial and temporal flexibility; co-creation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/19/6868/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/19/6868/ (text/html)
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:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:19:p:6868-:d:1250249
Access Statistics for this article
Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao
More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager (indexing@mdpi.com).