Social and Economic Implications for the Smart Grids of the Future

Abstract

IntroductionWe live in a world that is set up on consuming energy day after day and hour after hour. The whole existence of humanity is dependent on energy. One simply cannot imagine an everyday live without a comfort of having electricity at our homes, functioning street lamps lighting up our streets, an unlimited supply of gasoline to fill up the tanks of our cars, or the smooth flow of natural gas in our pipes to heat up our homes in winter.The best representation of energy that is always there, always on demand, is, without any doubt, electricity. Growing up in any developed Western country in the 1980s, the 1990s, or even later would leave one firmly believing that electricity was ubiquitous and always on demand whenever one needed it. Surely, blackouts happened from time to time, but they were relatively seldom. The energy supply worked on the money and there was always hot water in the pipes, the heating kept the homes warm in winter, and the lights, TV and radio were always working.It is hard to imagine surviving several days without electricity. All of us, consumers or business, depend on its constant and undisrupted flow (Janda et al., 2013; Abrham et al., 2015). In a way, we believe in electricity like if it was some form of a new religion (Strielkowski and Cabelkova, 2015).Sure enough, one can imagine a day or two of hiking and sleeping in a tent by the campfire. But what if this unintentionally turns into a longer stay perhaps lasting for a week or even longer? All of a sudden one will start to realize that her or his smartphone is discharged and stopped working all together, the flashlight ran out of batteries, it is not possible to call or e-mail anyone, friends' status on Facebook cannot be checked and all thin lines with the outside world are broken. For most of the people life in such situation would become too hard to bear. Surely, some people might find it adventurous and romantic to go into the wild and sit by the campfires but many of these endeavours end up badly unless you drag the power generators, solar panels and other things with you. Even the participants of the Burning Man (called Burners), famous art festival that takes place in Nevada's at the end of every August and includes creating an entire self-sustainable and self-supporting city (called Black Rock City) in the lifeless desert bring with them enormous amounts of equipment, supplies and fuel to light up the desert in one-week long magic carnival and to create all sorts of comfort for themselves - including smartphone charging stations, live music podia, discotheques, saunas, movie theatres, and much more (Kozinets, 2002). Everyone depends on constant supply of energy, even the modern-day couch journalists who try to shape up the public opinion from the comfort of their homes without even going into the field (Cabelkova et al., 2015).Overall, humankind grows too comfortable taken the electricity supply of energy as granted. But of all this can change one day and the scenarios might vary. For instance, the NBC Revolution TV series (2012-2014) shows the world in 2027, about 15 years after a hypothetical secret government weapon project that used nanotechnology as a means of draining electricity from all power devices went awry. The opening line for each of the series' episode starts with the following lines:We lived in an electric world. We relied on it for everything. And then the power went out. Everything stopped working. We weren't prepared. Fear and confusion led to panic. The lucky ones made it out of the cities. The government collapsed. Militias took over, controlling the food supply and stockpiling weapons. We still don't know why the power went out. But we 're hopeful someone will come and light the way (Revolution, 2012).These words very precisely portray the current situation and the people's attitude to today's power systems: we rely upon them too much and we cannot do without them. …