Innovation Dynamics of Socio-Technical Alignment in Community Energy Storage: The Cases of DrTen and Ecovat

Abstract

With energy transition gaining momentum, energy storage technologies are increasingly spotlighted as they can effectively handle mismatches in supply and demand. The decreasing cost of distributed energy generation technologies and energy storage technologies as well as increasing demand for local flexibility is opening up new possibilities for the deployment of energy storage technologies in local energy communities. In this context, community energy storage has potential to better integrate energy supply and demand at the local level and can contribute towards accommodating the needs and expectations of citizens and local communities as well as future ecological needs. However, there are techno-economical and socio-institutional challenges of integrating energy storage technologies in the largely centralized present energy system, which demand socio-technical innovation. To gain insight into these challenges, this article studies the technical, demand and political articulations of new innovative local energy storage technologies based on an embedded case study approach. The innovation dynamics of two local energy storage innovations, the seasalt battery of DrTen® and the seasonal thermal storage Ecovat®, are analysed. We adopt a co-shaping perspective for understanding innovation dynamics as a result of the socio-institutional dynamics of alignment of various actors, their articulations and the evolving network interactions. Community energy storage necessitates thus not only technical innovation but, simultaneously, social innovation for its successful adoption. We will assess these dynamics also from the responsible innovation framework that articulates various forms of social, environmental and public values. The socio-technical alignment of various actors, human as well as material, is central in building new socio-technical configurations in which the new storage technology, the community and embedded values are being developed.

New Pathways for Community Energy and Storage

“…Koirala, van Oost and van der Windt (2020) studied the interaction between energy technology development and societal actors, including engaged citizens [12]. They analyze the rise of two new storage technologies, the seasonal thermal storage Ecovat system and the sea salt battery of DrTen, and the way they were implemented by local energy cooperatives.…”

“…Nine contributions investigate the potential and constraints of energy cooperatives, citizens energy and community energy [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Three contributions discuss both community energy and local energy storage [10][11][12]. Some of them take individual households as the point of analysis [10], while others explicitly discuss national [2][3][4][5]11] or European Union (EU) governance [6][7][8][9], or the issues of energy justice and social-technological dynamics [2,3,12].…”

“…Three contributions discuss both community energy and local energy storage [10][11][12]. Some of them take individual households as the point of analysis [10], while others explicitly discuss national [2][3][4][5]11] or European Union (EU) governance [6][7][8][9], or the issues of energy justice and social-technological dynamics [2,3,12]. Approaches vary from modelling [13,14] to theory development [1] and empirical studies, including case studies and surveys.…”

COVID, CITIES and CLIMATE: Historical Precedents and Potential Transitions for the New Economy

“…The new patterns of urbanism that are emerging around these systems are already showing why cities will become much more distributed into local areas of infrastructure management, but they will still fit into a citywide or regionwide grid system for equity and balance [40][41][42]. The rapid growth in solar has now moved into shared solar systems for medium-and high-density housing, enabled by localised solar utilities with batteries and other technologies for enabling sharing such as community-based storage and blockchain-based management [41,43,44]. Industrial estates with shared solar appear to be next, as well as rural and remote systems [41,45].…”

Thermal/Cooling Energy on Local Energy Communities: A Critical Review

“…The importance of their findings was that they not only addressed the challenges of the legislation and tax-related issues but they also specified the technical difficulties of the case studies' installation, operation and performance. Citizen empowerment and engagement appear to be two of the important challenges even in novel systems such as these [31].…”