Smart Grid in the Arctic City

Historical, Technological, and Social Aspects of Evolution

Abstract

This article presents the evolution of a smart grid in an artic city, and we analyze its development using the Smart Grid Reference Architecture (SGAM) and from historical, technological, and social points of view in an Arctic context. We illustrate the emergence of smart grid application and its relation to energy consumption habits and sustainability. The study includes observations from empirical research conducted using a mixed methods approach. This included two months of organizational ethnographies consisting of interviews with specialists at an electricity utility, shadowing the workers, participant observation in the control center, and a questionnaire survey among local residents. Three stages of transformation in the electricity network were observed: 1) the conversion from analog to digital in network operations, with residents as passive receivers of electricity; 2) introducing digital communications and a digital local area network that allowed residents to report consumption; 3) the electrical network as an evolving smart grid with a digital platform enabling two-ways communication among network actors. People became more active when smart grid applications were introduced in the electricity network and middle-aged men can now better manage their energy consumption, even though their motivation is financial, rather than environmental. At the same time, unplugging from the smart grid becomes increasingly difficult.