Energy communities (EC) have been suggested by the EU as a way of making a clean energy transition by increasing the production of renewable energy while also empowering citizens to participate in their local energy system. This is seen as a critical step in decentralizing the energy system in a democratic way, treating households as energy citizens rather than consumers. The concept can be realized in many different forms such as local organisations, and cooperatives. In Europe, there are examples of energy communities where energy is locally produced, shared, stored, and consumed. In Sweden the number of such ECs is still small, mainly due to unclear legal requirements.  Sweden has historically been privileged with an abundance of centrally produced inexpensive electricity from hydro and nuclear power. The power grid is owned by municipal or national companies, where the role of citizens is to be a passive end point, which purchases (and sometimes sells) electricity. This leads to a centralized perspective of electricity where citizens are stuck in the position of individual consumers, rather than part of a collective participating in the energy system.

Our contribution argues that this established framing of households may constitute a barrier for the development of energy communities in Sweden. Another potential barrier is treating energy as a commodity rather than an ecological resource or a social necessity. In this contribution, we describe preliminary results from interviews with stakeholders in the formation of energy communities in Sweden, focusing on expectations of households and the conceptualization of energy. Our contribution describes one case in the development of energy communities in Sweden. In this case housing cooperatives (HC) are recruited to form a local energy community through energy efficiency measures and, eventually, expanding to increased local energy production and virtually sharing electricity. Our interview study covers stakeholders that were part of initiating and forming the energy community, from early planning stages to practical implementation.

We see two examples that illustrate the ambiguity of how energy is conceptualized and the role of households in the EC. First, we observe a conflict between environmental and economic values. The EC is on the one hand argued to be an important step towards breaking the dependence on fossil fuels by providing local renewable forms of energy, mainly from PV panels and geothermal heating pumps. Stakeholders also describe how their own engagement with the EC stems from climate anxiety. This indicates that energy is primarily viewed as an ecological resource requiring careful conservation.

However, when describing the practical implementations of the energy community and the reasons for joining it, economic reasons dominate the reasoning such as participating in local flexibility markets and saving money. Our second finding is that agency is shifted from a citizen level to housing cooperatives and their representatives. For instance, housing cooperatives have made decisions regarding the timing of EV charging without prior information to residents. Representatives of the EC emphasise that the structure is one of ‘representative democracy’ where people assigned as ‘energy responsible’ are mandated by HCs to make decisions on behalf of their buildings, for example to decide when electric loads such as heating pumps and ventilation can be shut off between certain hours.

The general principle seems to be that being part of an EC is not supposed to affect households in any way, their role is mainly a passive one not to be disturbed. To conclude, the observed case represents a form of semi-decentralised EC where middle-out actors such as housing cooperatives are the decision makers on behalf of individual consumers. Different framings of energy carry different weight, where energy as a commodity continues to be the dominant representation.

Smart grids are proposed to enable the integration of renewables and facilitate the energy transition. Households have been pointed out as a significant resource for demand response, that is to adapt their electricity consumption based on the status in the grid. This article analyses narrative mismatches in the context of smart grid implementation in Sweden. We compare policy narratives on the role of homes in the future energy system with home personas, emerging from interviews with households. The policy narratives envision households to become either actively engaged in time-shifting motivated by information and incentives, or bypassed through automation. The home personas, although seemingly similar, show great diversity, being well informed about their electricity use, concerned regarding the safety of technology, preferring to manage flexibility themselves, and reluctant to give up control. Several dissonances are identified between narratives and the home personas regarding smart meter communication, energy awareness, trust, agency, and control, that need further attention for demand response to be realised. The analysis illustrates how policy visions of the home in the future grid would encounter severe challenges in living up to values and characteristics of real households. Policy thus needs to acknowledge households as a diverse group to ensure a sustainable and democratic energy transition. We encourage the use of home personas to substantiate this diversity.

The smart grid is expected to encompass the overall electrification of society, while simultaneously managing increasing amounts of renewable energy. This could significantly impact how everyday life will be organized. However, previous research has shown that the envisioned role of households in the future energy system remains obscure and even contradictory. In this article we further examine and critically analyse how households as a demand response resource are imagined in the Swedish future smart grid. We focus on policy documents from the Swedish energy sector. To guide our analysis, we use the critical policy analysis framework of “What's the problem represented to be?” (WPR) for inspiration. Aligning with prior research, our results show that households tend to be framed as an untapped flexibility resource where heating and smart home technologies are to be controlled automatically or through remote control, which households allow for, motivated by consumption feedback, price signals or other incentives. Topics silenced in the problem representation include: The paradox in transitioning into a sustainable energy system while simultaneously sustaining unsustainable norms; a lack of diversity and acknowledgement of non-technical households; how trust and control need renegotiation and alternative ways for citizen participation in the energy transition.

Power shortages and fluctuations in electricity supply are expected to become more frequent in the future, as renewable energy increases in the electricity mix. This poses a problem in that electricity might not always be available at the time of demand for industries as well as for households. Demand flexibility in households has been brought forward as part of a solution to this problem. How to engage households in this, however, is still unclear. Actors have tried to liken demand flexibility with waste sorting and other altruistic activities with connotations of contributing to the benefit of society, rather than being an activity springing from economic motives. In this article, we use design fiction to critically explore what this analogy would mean in the context of household electricity consumption. We describe fictive user scenarios for cooking, charging the electric car, laundry & dishes and heating to draw the demand flexibility analogies to the forefront. By exemplifying and concretizing these scenarios, it becomes evident that using waste sorting as an analogy for demand flexibility is not realistic. We discuss the implications of the scenarios in relation to the current visions that inform the development of the smart grid, and the emerging services and service providers. We conclude that there is a need to challenge the current images of flexible households in the smart grid in order to design systems that support thriving within limits.

A microgrid's self-consumption rate reflects its ability to retain its own energy and decrease its reliance on the synchronous grid. This paper investigates the empirical case of a microgrid equipped with photovoltaic (PV) panels and identifies challenges in engaging the microgrid's users to increase their self-consumption. Accordingly, we explored both the physical and social dimensions of the microgrid. The former involved mapping the electricity consumption and production through an exploratory data analysis, and evaluating the associated price signals, while the latter involved the use of design interventions to explore users' perceptions of the system. We highlight the problem of price signal impedance, the need for cost reflective pricing and the challenge in designing and extending internal price models in settings with various actors. We address the limitations of price signals, alongside alternative unidimensional signals, and emphasize the need for an integrated approach to a user engagement strategy as well as the challenges that this approach entails. Our results shed light on the complexity of energy communities such as microgrids, and why their implementation can introduce multidimensional challenges that demand cross-disciplinary approaches.

The transition into the future electricity system builds upon the inclusion of more intermittent energy sources in the grid, requiring electricity consumption to adapt to production. Households are pointed out as playing an important role, carrying a potential for being flexible in that their electricity use may be adapted to the supply of the grid. This contribution focuses on how expectations on households from industry and agencies align with reality of everyday life. We explore the relation between expectations and reality through the concepts of activity and awareness, frequently mentioned by stakeholders, and what the concepts imply for households’ participation. Results from three separate studies are highlighted: 1) Document analysis of stakeholder expectations on households; 2) Interviews with stakeholders; 3) Interviews with 16 households with a new smart meter. 

Results from study 1 and 2 show that stakeholders envisage households to become more active and flexible in their electricity use. However, what this entails is only vaguely expressed. Stakeholders may intend activity to mean time-shifting electricity usage, and that this would be attained if households had detailed information about their electricity consumption. Still, it remains unclear whether the activity of households denotes households temporally, and manually, shifting their chores or whether technology would mediate the shift. In the latter case, technology would serve as a flexibility mediator, possibly through automation. Home equipment, e.g. heat pumps, would be controlled without households’ active participation. Concurrently, grid operators signal passivity of households as a benefit – households don’t need to bother as the operator promises to take care of everything. Nevertheless, results from study 1 and 2 show that although automated control of household equipment may lessen the burden of manual time-shifting electricity usage, there is a consensus that households need to be made aware of their electricity use through feedback enabled by a smart meter and mobile apps. Stakeholders indicate an ambivalence in what to expect from households – manual shifting of activities, automation generating the shift, or awareness through feedback on electricity use? Some stakeholders hold that awareness is enough – whereas others hold that awareness only is a means towards an end of time shifting action. 

Study 3 shows that some of the interviewed households are indeed active and aware but not in the way that stakeholders envisage them to be, and regardless of their technical interest or energy awareness. For example, some households were active in monitoring their electricity meter to check the accuracy of the electricity bill. They wanted feedback, albeit more nuanced than how stakeholders imagine, e.g., on appliance level and feedback explaining increase in consumption. Some engaged in time shifting by manually unplugging appliances and running the washing machine during night. Some also expressed thoughts on being active in the way that stakeholders imagine: “But [operator] cannot load nor empty my washing machine”, indicating that there is more to load balancing than turning on an appliance. However, study 3 mainly highlight the heterogeneity between and within households. Households are active regarding the focus of everyday practices, in which electricity consumption is viewed as a means towards this focus rather than an end. They differ regarding their motivations, use of technology, everyday context, their knowledge, and energy use. 

To conclude, our studies point to a gap between how stakeholders view the role of householders in the energy system and the reality of the daily context of householders. To bridge this gap, heterogeneity of householders needs to be addressed. This plays a central part in pursuing democratic values, allowing for citizens to participate on equal terms in a sustainable future grid.

Despite the recognized importance of citizen participation in the energy transition, many community energy initiatives face persistent challenges with low participation rates and implementation barriers. While the European Union's Clean Energy for all Europeans package has promoted 'energy communities' (ECs) as a vehicle for meaningful citizen engagement, questions remain about how and why citizens participate in these initiatives. This study addresses a significant gap in the literature by examining energy communities through the theoretical lens of communities of practice (CoP), focusing specifically on learning processes that enable successful citizen participation in such energy initiatives. Drawing from a 2.5-year longitudinal study of a Swedish energy community initiative, this research uses interviews, documents, and community meeting observations to examine how citizens engage as 'energy managers' for housing associations. Applying a CoP framework, we identify nested learning structures that facilitate collective knowledge sharing and experiential learning among energymanagers. Our findings reveal a novel organizational model where collective legal entities rather than individuals serve as members, suggesting new engagement pathways through representative democracy. The study demonstrates how knowledge transfer through peer learning creates practical wisdom around implementation challenges especially within ECs. Energy managers emerge as pivotal intermediaries whose relational networks, especially within CoPs directly influence energy outcomes. This research contributes to understanding energy communities beyond traditional place or interest framings, revealing how relational work and knowledge-sharing practices underpin successful formation. The findings suggest that supporting intermediaries and nurturing social learning processes could enhance citizen participation in the energy transition.