Social media in the evolution of the Smart Grid in the 21st century

Anna Pamuła
Additional contact information
Anna Pamuła: Uniwersytet Łódzki

Collegium of Economic Analysis Annals, 2015, issue 36, 377-390

Abstract: Smart Grid (SG) solutions and changes on the energy market are becoming a serious challenge for all stakeholders of energy value chain. In the traditional system of energy distribution, energy distributors did not worry about their customers too much. At the other end, energy customers are not used to choice when buying energy services, most often they are not even familiar with current offers and possibilities. If the purchased product or service is new, complex and difficult to assess, consumers are looking for new sources of reference. New SG technologies and energy markets are innovative and force customers to be more active and to become familiar with energy management systems. Therefore, the access to social media – which have become one of the most important sources of information exchange in the society of the 21st century – is so important. Some sectors like education or communication have noticed it a long time ago and have been using it to good effect for years to establish relations with consumers. According to the research done in 2010 by Harvard Business Review, the energy sector was far behind, holding the last position on the list. Massive growth of Renewable Energy Sources, the new role of energy customer, and Demand Side Management programmes made energy distribution companies change their relations with customers. The paper discusses the impact of the information on decision of customers in terms of new energy services and presents some examples of using social media by energy distributors, different organizations and providers of software used in customer engagement on the energy market and in Demand Side Management programmes; it also deals with raising awareness as to the adoption of Smart Grid technologies.

Keywords: Smart Grid; social media; DSM; Demand Side Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://rocznikikae.sgh.waw.pl/p/roczniki_kae_z36_27.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

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:sgh:annals:i:36:y:2015:p:377-390

Access Statistics for this article

Collegium of Economic Analysis Annals is currently edited by Joanna Plebaniak, Beata Czarnacka-Chrobot

More articles in Collegium of Economic Analysis Annals from Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of Economic Analysis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michał Bernardelli ().