IEA ISGAN Annex 7: Smart Grid Transitions (Working period 2020-2023)

ISGAN Working Group 7 (WG 7) deals with the transition of the energy system and focuses on institutional and socio-technical issues. The aim of the working group is to bundle international experiences and interdisciplinary research activities on the topic of smart grid transitions, prepare them and make them usable for policy makers.

The International Energy Agency's Technology Roadmap Smart Grids (OECD/IEA 2011) stated that the widespread introduction of smart grids represents a profound transformation within the energy system that goes well beyond technical feasibility. Since the 2015 Paris Climate Summit (COP21), this has been further emphasized in the context of the integration of renewable energy resources. Future energy systems will therefore also be more functionally (socio-technically) integrated. ISGAN WG 7 therefore distinguishes four dimensions of the socio-technical transition from established electrical energy networks to distributed smart grids: technologies, actors/users, institutional structures/networks and governance processes.

The project included the coordination of Working Group 7 (formerly Annex 7) as a "standing working group" in the function of Working Group Manager (formerly Operating Agent), the dissemination of the results at national level and the coordination and implementation of activities/tasks within the framework of the Program of Work (PoW). The tasks were carried out and outputs were generated in collaboration with the team of national experts from more than 10 countries. The activities were based on the methods of social science, economics and humanities research on institutional framework conditions of the transition, in particular on questions of governance and on the development of processes for the broad participation of relevant societal groups in the Smart Grids transition process.

The results of the work from the three tasks were made available to politicians, policy makers, the energy industry and other stakeholder groups (including regulatory bodies) in policy communications, several stakeholder workshops and webinars. The experts' networking and scientific exchange took place through participation in scientific conferences and workshops. Using a LinkedIn discussion group on Smart Grid Transition (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7489503), a network of currently more than 144 experts and practitioners is active. It is also available to Austrian experts, practitioners and researchers upon request is open.

Results were achieved in the 3 tasks of WG 7 in the period from 2020-2023:

Task 1 – Transition Processes and Pathways

Several formats for the participation of new and established stakeholders and actors were developed and implemented. For the work in Task 2, a community of practice for the international exchange of knowledge between policy makers from ministries and stakeholders such as regulatory authorities and funding agencies from more than 10 countries was successfully established. Furthermore, an ISGAN wiki tool was developed to improve communication across sectors, disciplines, national contexts/laws/paradigms and to develop a common understanding of smart grid narratives.

Task 2 – Smart Reflexive Governance

The engagement with the topic of "regulatory experimentation" over several years has had a significant influence at the national level on the design of the BMK's Energie.Frei.Raum program (Energy.Free.Space) to promote sandboxes as well as on the legal basis required for this, which was decided by the Austrian parliament in the EAG 2021. Austria plays an active role in the international knowledge exchange in the ISGAN Sandbox Community of Practice with Energie.Frei.Raum. These and other activities have led to the shared understanding that experimentation in sandboxes enables regulatory learning. Recommendations in this regard were presented to the Clean Energy Ministerial in 2021. The findings from the task were also incorporated into a European Commission document on regulatory learning in the EU in 2023 {SWD(2023) 277 final}.

Another focus was on the RTI policy challenges in the design of mission-oriented funding programs and instruments that are related to the criterion of technology readiness. This is related to the criticism of the established Technology Readiness Level (TRL) approach and the question of whether or why it blocks transformative innovation? In Europe, policymakers responsible for establishing research and innovation programs for the energy transition are faced with the limitation of supply-side R&D projects, as the setting of the TRL logic as a central criterion promotes the promotion of mission- and demand-side-oriented R&D projects are hardly possible. Different alternative or potentially complementary readiness concepts were identified: Societal Readiness, Scaling Readiness, Socio-technical Innovation Maturity, (Combined) Market Readiness, Demand Readiness, Institutional Readiness, Organizational Readiness, Commercial Readiness, ... In reaction to the limitation of TRL some of the readiness concepts were introduced in a complementary manner as part of the development of the Strategic Research Agenda of the European Clean Energy Transition Partnership and the first calls for proposals.

Task 3 – Smart Grid Transitions and Institutionalizations

The work created an expanded understanding of the rationalities of increasingly decentralized energy systems and the associated roles of new and established actors at the Grid-Edge, i.e. in local electricity networks. It was found that value orientation (individual versus collective) and service orientation (self-sufficiency versus system service) of households and companies will be crucial for future decentralization configurations. As central actors on the Grid-Edge, households and companies are no longer exclusively recipients of an energy service. Rather, they can act as providers of flexibility services to the network operator by producing PV power, as storage providers and/or by reacting with demand response, and thus contributing to public services. Furthermore, different Lock-Ins were identified, and cases showed how decisions cause path dependencies that determine the speed and direction of the transition and the transformed future energy system.

Austria (Operating Agent), Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
Dr. Klaus Kubeczko
Giefinggasse 4, 1210 Wien
E-Mail: Klaus.kubeczko@ait.ac.at