PhD candidate, Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Centre Urbanisation Culture Société (Québec) & Sorbonne Université, UMR Sirice (Paris) clarencehatton[at]gmail.com Twitter : @clarence_hp
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…
Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.mosstimo@hu-berlin.de
Department of Geography, Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET), University of Bergen, Norway / Department of Media and Social Sciences, University of Stavanger, Norway.Siddharth.Sareen@uis.no Twitter: @sidsareen
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…
University of Northumbria (UK) peter.forman[at]northumbria.ac.uk
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…
Newcastle University robert.shaw2[at]ncl.ac.uk Twitter: @WhatIsRobShaw
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…
UCL Energy Institute michael.fell[at]ucl.ac.uk Twitter: @mikefsway
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…
Sociology, Lancaster University @stanleybluephd
Geography and Environmental Science, Northumbria University @PeterJForman1
Sociology, Lancaster University @ElizabethShove
The goal of maintaining current levels of energy supply and demand whilst reducing their carbon intensity will require greater use of renewables. As a result, new forms of flexibility will be needed. While the emerging “flexibility industry” promises solutions based on current configurations,…
Department of Anthropology, Durham University. simone.abram[at]durham.ac.uk
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. antti.silvast[at]ntnu.no
This paper examines the linked concepts of flexibility and control, focusing on how these are enacted in the operation of control rooms in Distribution Network Organisations. We discuss the limits to flexibility, and the kinds of flexibility that are at stake in distribution network control of…
