Abstract
The impact of human activities on the environment is no longer to be demonstrated today and concerns many fields. With a view to environmental protection, applied to global warming limitation and fossil fuels preservation, Smartgrids are currently emerging, especially, under the impetus of European and French legislation. In emerging technologies, end-user-related issues, articulated with the design process, continue to raise conceptual, methodological and operational questions. The perspective of complex sociotechnical systems is useful for Smartgrids and to underline the necessary multidisciplinary approach to design. Yet raised for decades, the articulation of multidisciplinary approaches in the design of complex systems still questions fundamental problems today. These questions are all more unresolved in the context of innovative technologies such as Smartgrids. The objective of this paper is to propose 1) a conceptual reflection applied to the design of these Smartgrids seen as emerging sociotechnical systems, and 2) a case study by illustrating with the VERTPOM project. On the one hand, we discuss four fundamental points in user-centered design of Smartgrids: we describe the legislative impulses for the rollout of smart metters and the emergence of Smartgrids, we highlight the supplier/consumer synergy that is essential for efficient energy management, we explain the importance of adapting systems to the wide public in domestic, professional and public situations in the context of consumer control of energy demand, and we address the issue of the more traditional field of supervision and control of complex dynamic processes by operators. On the other hand, we present the VERTPOM project aiming at developing a set of digital tools for energy management and energy efficiency in order to make a positive energy territory that produces more energy than it consumes by introducing the project and its actors and explaining how design acceptable Smartgrids for consumers and operators of energy suppliers.
Highlights
Defining the multidimensional concept of emerging technologies is useful for addressing design issues and future uses
Loup-Escande (2019) uses four characteristics to distinguish emerging technologies from other more classic or older technologies : 1) a major technological innovation - technological, hardware, software or on the nature and processing of data, as in artificial intelligence; 2) a priori fuzzy uses - initially driven by technocentric issues rather by operational applications, which are going to evolve with time, in interaction with evolution of technologies, of uses and users and the emergence of new application areas; 3) limits to wide application - due to at least five types of limits: technological; usability; immature applicability; lack of reporting feedbacks; and methodological limits for identifying their operational potentials; 4) the perspective and the hope of an economic and social evolution generated in their context of use
Users are able to propose features and properties of the future application that were previously latent and unconscious, and contribute to enriching practical acceptability by integrating these new needs during design (Newell, Carmichael, Morgan & Dickinson, 2006). The objective of this positioning paper was to show that the design of Smartgrids did involve the resolution of technological issues, and questioned the human and social sciences, ergonomics
Summary
Defining the multidimensional concept of emerging technologies is useful for addressing design issues and future uses. In the rest of the article, we deal with the legislative impulses for the emergence of Smartgrids, the supplier/consumer synergy for efficient energy management, adapting systems to consumers (those related to the control of energy demand) and operators (those related to the supervision and control of complex dynamic processes). After this theoretical conceptualization, we illustrate how we deal with user-related issues in design and use, basing on the VERTPOM case study. We deal with the legislative impulses for the emergence of Smartgrids, the supplier/consumer synergy for efficient energy management, adapting systems to consumers (those related to the control of energy demand) and operators (those related to the supervision and control of complex dynamic processes)
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