Historicising Flexibility

This paper provides an account of how past changes in energy demand have affected the balancing of the UK’s gas systems between the introduction of gaslight in 1795 and the present day. Four periods are examined in which the principal uses of gas have broadly differed: periods in which the…

This article introduces the concept of ‘Polyflexibility’ as a way of expressing the complexity of interacting forms of flexibility. The term, deriving from Henri Lefebvre’s concept of polyrhythmia, is used in contrast to conceptualizations of flexibility in energy studies which rest primarily on…

Heat-as-a-Service (HaaS) involves the provision of agreed room temperatures at certain times for a fixed fee, instead of charging for energy use on a per-unit basis. This arrangement enables the operator to remotely manage the heating system to use electricity when it is cheaper, thereby…

Reducing energy use is a key imperative for Western societies. However, it is hard to envision how this might come about and what changes are entailed. This article proposes that studying energy history helps understand flexibility in energy systems. It uses the case of…

Berlin’s modern history provides an instructive window on the evolution of energy flexibility in an urban context. Since being enlarged to its current territory in 1920, it has encountered a huge variety of political regimes and disruptive socio-economic events that have substantially impacted…