SME Customers: Energy Practices and Flexibility
Overview
This paper provides a synopsis of the research findings produced by the social science team at Durham University in collaboration with the engineering research team at Durham and Newcastle Universities. The full findings of the research can be found in the Durham University Social Science Research Report released in April 2014 (CLNR-L052).
The social science research conducted as part of CLNR has adopted a socio‐technical approach to understanding the provision and use of energy services, in which energy systems are seen as constituted through the continual interaction of both social and technical entities and where demand for energy is produced through and essential to the workings of different practices in homes and businesses. We conceptualize energy use as shaped through the interaction of five different core elements, which together work to constitute energy-related social practices and the ways they are organised and distributed across spaces and time.
