Smart grids and the techno-material construction of an electricity consumer

GRANDCLMENT Catherine GRETS (EDF R&D) catherine.grandclement@gmail.com

NADA Alain CIRED / CNRS nadai@centre-cired.fr

Draft paper. Only to be quoted and/or cited with permission of the authors.

ABSTRACT:
The paper focuses on construction of the smart electricity consumer in France. The analysis is
based on a seemingly minor episode of a large and still on-going protest against the deployment of a
smart metering infrastructure in France. That minor episode has however large-scale consequences
for consumers and businesses.
Following suit with social history and cultural theory approaches of consumption but with an ANT
twist, we consider consumers as constructed figures. We examine the making of the consumer in a
very literal sense, that of the material and technical devices through which an alleged consumer
behaviour is inscribed in a crucial piece of the electricity market. At least three versions of the
consumer struggle to be inscribed in the French smart meter. Two of them are version of a consumer
defined by individual preferences, individual action and rational optimisation. The first version is an
energy saving consumer which resembles very much the attitude, behaviour, choice paradigm of
energy efficiency (Shove, 2010). The second version is a rational chooser on a market, originated in
economic theory. The third version is the attached consumer. Largely captive of elaborate market
offers and marketing devices, that consumer unwillingly relinquishes his power to suppliers (Cochoy,
2007; Trompette, 2005).
The struggle to inscribe the consumer in the meter also is a struggle to define how the market should
work. We follow the way in which different theories and practices of market construction become
interwoven in and around the technical design of the French smart meter. This paper brings a
concrete case study to the discussion of markets as means of steering energy demand. It is also a
critical appraisal of how markets and consumers are constructed.

Introduction
The paper focuses on the construction of the smart electricity consumer in France. Our analysis is
based on a seemingly minor episode of the large public and still on-going protest against the
deployment of a smart metering infrastructure in France1. That minor episode which concerns a small
technical component of the French smart meter has however large-scale consequences for consumers
and businesses. What is at stake in this controversy is how end-users are defined as electricity
consumers and with what type of agency.
This story is reconstructed from a small set of interviews with high-profile managers in a series of key
institutions of the smart meter programme2. While our interviews were intended to be exploratory,
we found ourselves propelled into a minutiae of technical details about the smart meter design and
especially about the radio module of the French smart meter. Each of these technical details was in
fact a move in a political and economic battle (Latour, 1996; MacKenzie, 1990). What was at stake was
the role of the consumer and its capacities to act in the renewed electrical world of the smart grid.
Associated with this position of the consumer was also evidently the ability to act of businesses and
other actors.
Our approach of the case study is very much informed by an ANT-brand of social studies of markets.
Following on social history and cultural theory of consumption but with an ANT twist, we consider
consumers not as natural beings but as constructed figures. The task we set ourselves on is of
examining the making of the consumer in a very literal sense, that of the material and technical
devices through which something such as a consumer behaviour could be expressed. In so doing, we
rely on the notion of script as put forward by Madeleine Akrich (Akrich, 1992) in order to analyse the
way in which agency is configured and distributed among humans and non-humans ((Akrich and
Latour, 1992); (Oudshoorn and Pinch, 2003)). This approach is at work in the radically constructivist
approach to economic action put forward by Michel Callon ((Callon, 1998), (Callon, 2007), (Callon and
Muniesa, 2005)). Similarly, the consumer can be understood as an actantial position materially
supported or enabled by devices ((Muniesa et al., 2007); (Muniesa, n.d.)). We are also very much
inspired by recent sociological and anthropological studies of the ingraining of the consumer character
in technological projects of smart grids (zden-Schilling, 2015; Strengers, 2013).
In what follows, we will analyse how one device of the smart meter is designed in order to script and
perform a certain version of the consumer. As we will see below, at least three versions of the
consumer struggle to be inscribed in the meter. Two of these versions, which fail to be inscribed into
the meter, are versions of a consumer defined by individual action, preferences and optimizing choices.
Only a third version is inscribed in the meter, which performs a consumer that has unwillingly
relinquished his power to suppliers. It is the attached consumer, the largely captive consumer of
elaborate market offers, bundled products and services, loyalty programs and other marketing devices
((Cochoy, 2007), (Trompette, 2005)).
Whereas the smart grid vision advocated in French or EU policy documents and grey literature
celebrates the advent of a smart consumer defined as a rational, optimising, real-time informed
and reactive, environmentally conscious if not environmentally engaged market actor , the process
we analyse results in the decision of not directly delivering the basic price information to the French
electricity consumer. Instead, other market actors are endowed with the possibility of accessing these
1 For a larger take on the controversies generated by

the French smart meter program, see (Danieli, forthcoming).

2 Interviews were conducted in May

2014 and completed in March 2016. We conducted interviews at the French

Energy and Environment Agency, at EDF R&D, at the grid operator, at the Energy Ombudsman, at the Energy
Regulator, at the Ministry of Energy.

data. They develop business models around services of energy consumption optimisation for
residential customers. While contested by consumer associations, this decision is also - paradoxically supported on grounds of fair competition by tenants of free market. This story thus has the potential
to add to the performativity debate (MacKenzie et al., 2007),(MacKenzie, 2008) focusing on
economists in the wild rather than on academic economists. Or more precisely, about the role of
marketing know-how against that of the economic knowledge (Nilsson and Helgesson, 2015).
This paper is divided in two sections. In the first section, we point to the emergence of the consumer
character in European energy policy. We show that smart meters and smart grids are important
technologies that sustain the possibility for users to be understood as consumers. This sets the stage
for the second section of the paper in which we review the various possible technical configurations
of the smart meter. Three such configurations are examined, each of them corresponding to a different
understanding of what is a consumer and what he can do.

1. The consumer as part of the smart grid deployment across Europe

1.1.

The electricity consumer

consumer and the smart meter in EU directives

The consumer is a relatively new character in the electricity sector and one which is closely
associated with the process of market liberalisation. The consumer has become the relevant subject
of EU energy policy. In recent years, two directives have promoted both the consumer as the key actor
of energy policy and smart meters as the way to allow consumers to hold this key role.
This first of these directives is the 2006 EU Directive on energy efficiency3. This directive states that
consumers should be provided with more frequent and more accurate information on their energy
consumption than is usually the case with billings of gas and electricity according to estimates. The
second directive is the 2009 EU directive on market liberalisation 4 which says that intelligent metering
systems [] shall assist the active participation of consumers in the electricity supply market. The
directive gives an objective of a minimum of 80% of consumers equipped with smart meters across all
Member States by 2020. Each member-states must however conduct a cost-benefit analysis in order
to decide whether or not to engage in such a massive smart metering programme. The model of the
consumer put forward in the market liberalisation directive is very coherent with the one of the energy
efficiency directive. It is a behaviourist model of the consumer. Consumers and markets are however
relatively newcomers in the electricity sector and it is interesting to note that the meter (as a
quantification device) is presented as very instrumental in supporting their emergence. While this
second directive does not specify how the meter helps the consumer to become an active participant
in the electricity market, we can guess that the consumer is envisioned as a chooser [between different
suppliers] and an optimiser [between different rates of electricity which vary along the day], with
electricity being defined as a conjunction between price and time.
This is precisely the details of how regularly and easily can the consumer check his meter and access
her data that will become the topic of one aspect of the smart meter controversy in France. What does
this meter allow the consumer to do and how does it allow a consumer to do so? In other words, what
kind of consumer is scripted in the meter?

Directive 2006/32/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 April 2006 on energy end-use
efficiency and energy services

Directive 2009/72/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 July 2009 concerning common rules
for the internal market in electricity

1.2.

The consumer, the smart meter and the smart home in France

1.2.1. Principles of the smart home

The smart electricity grid is a technological project that mobilizes important funding for research,
technology and business development in the US, in Europe and in Asia (Strengers, 2013). The smart
grid aims at fully doubling the electrical network with a telecommunication network. That way the grid
would be bi-directional, allowing technical benefits for the grid 5 and a much better integration of
demand in the management of the electrical system6. The smart grid project comes accompanied with
many projects for modernizing electricity consumption and the home. For instance, non-essential
consumption could be deferred in case of grid congestion or when production is scarce. When demand
is high or supply is low, technical devices could automatically interrupt the washing machine or the
fridge in a way that is non-detrimental to the washing or to food conservation. A market system and
real-time price signals could be used to carry information toward the point of consumption about when
to consume and when not to. A machine could synthesise price signals and pre-programmed consumer
preferences and habits to decide whether or not to heat the home and wash clothes. All these
scenarios are of relevance for the demand-side of the smart grid. They are called active demand,
demand-side integration, demand-response, and so on. They all aim at shaping the load curve in
order to meet the load-balancing requirements of the electricity system. It is a part of the smart grid
project that is focused on the home and is sometimes called smart home. The smart home is also a
field where market development is expected and where business models are speculatively imagined.
The sketch below is a technical diagram of how a smart home could work. A box receives direct loadcontrol orders or price signals and communicate through waves or wires with the electrical appliances
of the home. This smart home does not need a smart meter to work.

Such as better monitoring of power failures and a better integration of renewable energies such as wind power
and photovoltaics.

A physical property of the electricity system shall be noted here. For electricity to circulate in the electrical
network and be delivered at consumption point, supply and demand have to be equal at all times. This is
sometimes called the load-balancing requirement of the system. The loads (consumption) must be balanced
(met) with generation (production). The smart grid opens up prospects for controlling consumption in order to
meet the requirement of production equals consumption at all times.

FIGURE 1. Smart home separated from smart meter

1.2.2. The fusion of the smart meter and the smart home projects in France
In France, a large-scale smart meter roll-out started in 2010 with a 6-month pilot phase during which
around 300,000 meters were installed. The pilot phase generated a heated debate and lots of
criticisms. In parallel, an important smart grid programme endowed with hundreds millions of euros
started in 2008 and increased in 2010 with economic stimulus money. This programme funded
demonstration projects that gather industrialists around real-size projects of technical innovation.
In June 2011, at a moment of heightened criticisms of the meter and while promoters of the project
raced to speed up decisions on the smart meter deployment, a new call for tender for smart grid
demonstration projects was issued. This call included the smart meter as an obligatory passage point
of such projects.
The initial smart meter project in France was however not specifically designed to support demandside management functions. Its aims were rather to automate meter readings in order to save on
reading costs and to improve the bills accuracy; to prevent electricity stealing; and to monitor
consumption at the level of a neighbourhood. The funding scheme for smart home projects of 2011
made two independent projects (smart meter and smart home) intersect. It led to embedding smart
home functions inside the smart meter. It also led to the discovery of an empty slot inside the meter
where such smart home functions could be located (see figure 2). This empty slot could be filled with
a radio module whose waves could be transmitted to home appliances.

FIGURE 2. Empty slot inside the meter

Following the presidential and general elections campaign in 2012, the smart meter project was halted
for several months. In November 2012, a working group on the meter was initiated by the newly
elected Environment Minister. The working group comprised industry stakeholders, administrative
bodies and consumer organisations. It dealt with financing aspects, functionalities, schedule, health
issues, technical standards, etc. A subset of this working group was devoted to the radio module of
the meter. The technical design of the radio module and the associated positions of the consumer and
types of market design is the topic of a struggle that we examine in the second part of this paper.

2. Scripting consumers and business models in the meter

Since smart home projects now had to pass through the meter, it involved a redesign of both the meter
and the smart home. As can be seen on figure 3, the box that served to control appliances in figure 1
has disappeared and its functions go through the meter.

FIGURE 3. Smart home through the meter

2.1.

Inscribing the energy saver consumer in the meter

In order to be fully deployed, the smart meter programme had to prove that it was beneficial (the costbenefit analysis should be positive, see above). Energy savings for the end-consumers were included
in the expected benefits of the smart meter deployment. A quite widespread assumption was that
energy savings would become possible on the consumers side because of (almost) real-time and easily
available information about energy consumptions. Central to this reasoning was a version of the
consumer endowed with behaviours that would change according to information. This behaviourist
version of the consumer is typical of the Attitude, Behaviour, Change or ABC model of society that is
very widespread in energy policy circles (Shove, 2010).
The smart meter, however, only had a small and not easy to read screen. In addition, meters are often
located outside the home or deliberately hidden of sight (concealed in a cabinet with the fuse box, for
instance). As a consequence, it seemed unlikely that consumers would regularly check their meter,
collect information and modify their electricity usage accordingly. Criticisms arose. The energy and
environment agency issued a negative rating for the meter. A consumer organization noticed that
consumers would not only have to bear the cost of the meter but also to pay for an additional display
device in order to get the frequently updated information that was part of the smart meter promise.
As a response to these criticisms, in January 2012, a ministerial order indicated that smart meters
would have to have : i) an interface accessible to the consumer for information display ; and ii) the
potential to transmit data so as to enable the remote control of appliances 7. Clearly, the smart meter
alone was not fulfilling these requirements.
Consumer associations, the energy and environment agency and the energy ombudsman seized the
November 2012 working group as an opportunity to demand that the smart meter be beneficial to the
consumer and provide information in a way that would promote energy savings behaviours. More
precisely they demanded that the radio module served this purpose. They asked that all 30 million
meters be equipped with it. The module could radio-transmit information about ones electricity usage
7

Arrt du 4 janvier 2012 pris en application de larticle 4 du dcret n 2010-1022 du 31 aot 2010 relatif aux
dispositifs de comptage sur les rseaux publics dlectricit.

to a screen (an in-home display) that would be provided to everyone along with the meter (see figure
4).
It was thus proposed that a communicating radio module and an in-home display be installed with
each smart meter as part of the public service of electricity. After all, the meter itself had been
introduced with an argument of public service and equality in a typical manifestation of the
infrastructural ideal (Graham and Marvin, 2001). A single type of smart meter was to be installed in
all 30 million homes of metropolitan France. The provision of information could be considered as public
good and not something to be subjected to market dynamics.

FIGURE 4. Smart meter + In-Home Display

The regulator however ruled against the universal provision of radio modules and in-home displays. It
justified his position with reference to the unbundling doctrine and what is an essentially spatial
account of where public service ends and where market begins. Upstream from the meter is the
natural monopoly of the grid operated by a regulated public company (grid operator). Downstream
from it is the realm of the market, with several companies competing for energy provision (energy
providers). The meter itself is situated in the domain of the public good. It is understood as a flat
interface between the two domains. From this point of view, anything which is plugged in after (or
downstream from) the meter is part of the domain of market competition. This spatial-political order
would be disturbed if the grid operator or indeed any public service operator was to provide a data
display beyond the meter and if it was to do so as a universal or basic service to all homes. Should
this happen, the spatial boundary between market and regulated infrastructure would be fractured. A
public good would enter the downstream domain, it would enter peoples homes - rightly posited as
the realm of the market - and in so doing it would distort competition (see figure 5). A publicly provided
in-home display would intrude, even protrude in the neat division between infrastructure and market
that is a founding tenet of market liberalisation in the electricity sector (Mosca, 2008; Reverdy, 2014).

FIGURE 5. The unbundling doctrine prevents the smart meter to be extended

inside the home/market with a display
In addition, the energy regulator and the energy providers saw the provision of data about energy
usage as a commodifiable service, and thus as something that should be delivered through the market,
rather than being viewed as a public good. Providers had already formulated business models based
on the telco industry in which they expected to offer consumers energy and energy services in new,
commercially viable bundles, for example by offering specific tariffs and energy displays. The idea that
in-home displays would be provided to everyone as part of the basic public service and provision of
electricity would instantly invalidate these business models. If providers were no longer able to
compete on elaborate bundled offers of rates and smart displays but only on bare prices, they would
soon enter a rat-race competition to the bottom. From their point of view future benefits were fast
evaporating.
The energy regulator insisted on drawing a clear line between the meter and the home because the
meter is part of the natural monopoly of the electricity network which is regulated. The interface was
to be supplied by the market (apps, website, displays....) and fully positioned on the consumer side.
However, in order to satisfy to the January 2012 ministerial order, it was decided that a simplydesigned website would be set up, where the customer could log in and retrieve some information
about his/her electricity usage (figure 6).

FIGURE 6. The smart meter and its public service web interface

2.2.

Using the meter to carry price signals and activate the consumer

The discussions about using the radio module as a gate to the in-home display opened up exchanges
about which data would be made available to the consumer. The ombudsman and consumer
organizations took for granted that price data would be available in and through the meter. It was
expected that the consumer could go buy a display device and plug it into the meter in order to display
energy prices and consumption at home. Price information was anyway needed in order to manage
appliances which is an assumed objective of the smart home programme.
The surprise was thus great in the working group when this assumption was not backed up by the
discussions. Not only would technicalities limit the meter in managing multiple and dynamic price fields
but the energy regulator again opposed this eventuality. According to the regulator, unbundling
required the regulated grid operator not to interfere with market coordination. This meant that grid
operator shall not access market data such as electricity retail prices. Although the consumer needs
electricity rates to manage its appliances, those rates shall not pass through the meter.
Eventually, a compromise was found: price-menus could be inscribed as hierarchical indexes in the
meter. As proxies for prices, indexes could inform the consumer about the hierarchy of pricing while
not revealing the exact real prices to the grid manager. Yet, as emphasised by the ombudsman, they
would not allow genuine optimisation. Consumer-led demand-response outside the pre-packaged
offers of energy suppliers (who know their prices) could only remain limited.
The decision was thus again justified by a boundary argument: the market as a space of private
interests had to be clearly separated from the space of collective infrastructure and public interests.

2.3.

Using the radio module as a smart home box

box

The discussions about the radio module in the working group progressively rendered explicit another
project about this module. Some actors intended to use the radio module to carry on the usual
functions of energy management boxes (see the initial smart home project, in figure 1). The box in
figure 1 could transmit direct load-control order to appliances or receive price signals as inputs for
optimisation. Price signals could be processed by an algorithm comprising consumer preferences and
appliances management resources in order to decide whether or not to shut down / postpone certain
home equipment (washing machine, fridge, heating ).
10

One advantage of using the radio module for demand response functionalities was that only the
meters of customers with a demand-response type of electricity rate would have to be equipped with
that extra component. However, since there is only one slot in the French smart meter, folding the
smart home box in its radio module and using it for demand-response functionalities created
rivalries as it endowed the actor who lodges his box in the meter with de facto market advantage.
This project however was closed down with the argument that a recent Energy Efficiency directive8
required the downstream meter market to remain fully open to competitors. As a market offer
chooser, the smart-electricity consumer should be faced with multiple offers in order to get the chance
to express its optimizing potential and drive market competition to a socially efficient configuration.
The presence of an in-competition smart home box, supported by private business models, installed
downstream from the meter and communicating with it, was thus required as a guarantee of a
competitive environment.

2.4.

Letting a market for smart home boxes develop

develop

Finally, the working group ended up with the following configuration: a radio module that transmits a
price hierarchy (but not a price list) through open-access waves so that competitors could develop
business models downstream from it and offer competitive energy management boxes.

FIGURE 7. The smart home through the smart meter

with a market for energy management boxes
In this final configuration, the consumer could in principle choose separately a box and a rate and then
programme his box so that the box could decode the price hierarchy from the meter. But in practice,
the energy provider (who knows prices) is much more able to do that assemblage of rate and box than
the end-user. This assemblage would be bundled offers with elaborate electricity rates, an energy
management box and perhaps a smart thermostat, an app or a display. In so doing, market actors
would render the cost of the smart grid equipment invisible for the final user. Such a bundled offer
8

Directive 2012/27/EU on Energy Efficiency - Article 18

11

could comprise for instance a rate of this type: price A at daytime weekdays except from 6pm to 8pm;
price B from 6pm to 8pm weekdays; price C at night-time weekdays; price D at daytime weekends;
price E at night-time weekends; price F from 12pm to 3pm in summer; price G for major emergencies
limited to 14 days a year] and a compatible pre-programmed box that would allow the consumer to
get most benefits from that rate.
In this kind of elaborate bundles of services, the provider keeps the consumer under his hand. The
consumer is captive [captated] in the sense of Trompette (2005) and Cochoy (2007). While, according
to Cochoy, it is always possible in principle for a customer to change supplier, this is very difficult in
practice. The realm of this consumer choice is overlooked by the abstractness of the economic
approach to market competition and the market chooser consumer. The figure of the consumer that
is inscribed in the techno-material ecosystem of the meter is that of a semi-captive consumer.

3. Conclusions
Conclusions
The first conclusion of this story has to do with the emergence of a consumer figure for smart grids.
The case points at a struggle to inscribe the consumer in the meter. Three different figures are at play
in this struggle: a behavioural energy saver; a market offer chooser and a captive customer. A rather
abstract economic doctrine (unbundling) is countered in this struggle by concrete techno-material
marketing efforts which result in twists and obvious contradictions in that doctrine. The final consumer
is deprived of price information, an information that the economic doctrine sees as a basic condition
of the functioning of a market. We end up with the paradoxical result that in the name of the market,
prices shall not be disclosed to the final consumer
The second conclusion is to consider market boundaries as a zone rather than as a fine line. The
unbundling doctrine holds a representation of the market as a delimited domain of activity with clearcut boundaries. The Linky controversy proves that this boundary is not a line. It is a zone to use a notion
put forward by Timothy Mitchell (Mitchell, 2007). In this zone struggles and negotiations happen about
where to draw the boundary. Market actors want to expand the market in order to increase the scope
of their business models.
The third conclusion deals with the notion of public interest. The radio module struggle could be
considered as a focused discussion that allows actors not to re-discuss the smart metering programme
as such. In the discussion, a convergence of interest emerges for financing the meter through the
market at the expenses of a captive consumer. The cost of the smart home infrastructure is borne by
end-consumers through business models and the market while public authorities stay out of the way.
The Ministries of energy and environment and the energy regulator can avoid being posited as the
(political) source of this cost. Both the grid operator and the main energy provider avoid the risk of
being posited as the managers of financial flows. Downstream-meter industrialists are endowed with
an extended enough sphere of activity to develop business models (mix of service, smart-homes ).
Hence, the captive consumer that is inscribed into the technical design of the meter and its ecosystem
should be regarded as the collateral effect of this convergence of interest. It must be noted however
that this convergence of interest is not always the product of an intentional action on the part of the
actors. As said above, as a doctrine, unbundling derives its rhetorical power from proceeding through
clear-cut dichotomies. It is however so abstract when it comes to actual practices of market actors that
it bypasses the subtleties of marketing devices. It cannot sort out the devices that seek to attach the
consumer from those which seek to offer the consumer a genuine choice.

12

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