This paper discusses a utility-led research project which piloted smart meters and DSR products (a time of use tariff and a critical peak rebate scheme) with 500 low income households in London. As households set about the task of adjusting their electricity use in response to shifting prompts, they revealed the importance of managing domestic labour to generate value from DSR products and the role of women in carrying this out. The experience is at odds with the smart future more typically imagined in which chore-doing is handed over to feminized AI assistants who orchestrate IoT appliances to create comfort and capture value. Strengers has cautioned against constructing a smart future to serve 'Resource Man'. Drawing on trial participants' experiences, the paper develops the concept of 'Flexibility Woman' in order to bring the realities of domestic labour more sharply into focus. The paper argues that chore-doing needs to become a narrative in the smart future to understand the burdens and opportunities for 'Flexibility Woman' to create value from her labour. It suggests that women unable to afford a surrogate AI wife may find themselves becoming 'Flexibility Woman' or else excluded from accessing the cheaper, greener electricity of the future. It also suggests that ignoring gender risks undermining the impacts that policy makers and network operators hope to achieve through DSR.The paper makes a unique contribution to our understanding of how DSR relates to gender roles and what the implications are for the effectiveness and inclusivity of flexibility products.

Big changes to the way in which research funding is allocated to UK universities were brought about in the Research Excellence Framework (REF), overseen by the Higher Education Funding Council, England. Replacing the earlier Research Assessment Exercise, the purpose of the REF was to assess the quality and reach of research in UK universities–and allocate funding accordingly. For the first time, this included an assessment of research ‘impact’, accounting for 20% of the funding allocation. In this article we use a text mining technique to investigate the interpretations of impact put forward via impact case studies in the REF process. We find that institutions have developed a diverse interpretation of impact, ranging from commercial applications to public and cultural engagement activities. These interpretations of impact vary from discipline to discipline and between institutions, with more broad-based institutions depicting a greater variety of impacts. Comparing the interpretations with the score given by REF, we found no evidence of one particular interpretation being more highly rewarded than another. Importantly, we also found a positive correlation between impact score and [overall research] quality score, suggesting that impact is not being achieved at the expense of research excellence.

In recent years, numerous studies have explored the opportunities and challenges for emerging decentralized energy systems and business models. However, few studies have focussed specifically on the economic and social value associated with three emerging models: peer-to-peer energy trading (P2P), community self-consumption (CSC) and transactive energy (TE). This article presents the findings of a systematic literature review to address this gap. The paper makes two main contributions to the literature. Firstly, it offers a synthesis of research on the social and economic value of P2P, CSC and TE systems, concluding that there is evidence for a variety of sources of social value (including energy independence, local benefits, social relationships, environmental responsibility and participation and purpose) and economic value (including via self-consumption of renewable electricity, reduced electricity import costs, and improved electricity export prices). Secondly, it identifies factors and conditions necessary for the success of these models, which include willingness to participate, participant engagement with technology, and project engagement of households and communities, among other factors. Finally, it discusses conflicts and trade-offs in the value propositions of the models, how the three models differ from one another in terms of the value they aim to deliver and some of the open challenges that require further attention by researchers and practitioners.

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