Date: 27 September
Time: 10.15 - 12.00

Program

10.15: William Throndsen: Introduction 
10.20: Mikkel Vindegg: Bringing the smart grid home: Nuancing smart energy technologies’ potential for balancing Norway’s grid capacity
10.30: Tineke Van Der Schoor: Local and flexible; three case studies of innovative community energy services. 
10.40: Ingrid Christensen: Demand-side management and transaction costs: An institutional perspective on flexibility capital 

11.00: Break 

11:10: Aggeliki Aggeli: An intersectionality framework for energy flexibility of European households 
11:20: Outi Pitkänen: To whom is end-user flexibility relevant and what are its limits?  
11:30: Ida Marie Henriksen: Flexibility mobility: Can a garage become a flexible hub?  
11.40: Joint discussion on what to make out of flexible electricity consumption (William moderates) 
11:55: Summing up and ending (deliver post-its with questions/comments either directly to the presenters or to the marked boxes) 

Format: Presentation

Time frame: 6-8 minutes + questions 

Flexibility of electricity consumption is considered by many a resource that can be collected, be it from households, work-life, or mobility. Flexibility as a concept in social science research could be understood as part of what Zygmund Bauman’s Liquid Modernity, as it contributes to global societal structures becoming more interconnected. At the same time work is ongoing to effectuate an energy transition by integrating more renewable energy sources, interconnecting ever more global grids to markets and geopolitics. Here, end use consumption patterns is constituted as a liquid resource for the techno people that do not connected  it to either to time nor place and the social structure we live our life after.  

In this workshop we wish to delve into the concept of flexibility and related themes such as flexibility capital (and poverty), flexible genders and families, and flexible mobility, in order to come to terms with what is the role of this concept in the energy transition.  

We welcome abstracts that deal with flexibility as concept and how to understand flexibility from different inroads of social science and humanities energy related research. For example: 

• End user perspectives
• Grid perspectives
• Political imaginaries
• Flexibility as society diagnosis. 
• ICBO – It could be otherwise. Do we need flexibility?
• Flexibility as class concept
• Prosumer capitalism 

Join us for a session of academic souls searching about how we as social scientists relate to flexibility as concept, how we research it, and how flexibility is becoming part of society. Topics both theoretical and methodological are welcome.

Organizers

Ida Marie Henriksen, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture  
Outi Pitkänen, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture
William Throndsen, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture

Contact: Ida Marie Henriksen