# Users Empowered in Smart Grid Development? Assumptions and Up-To-Date Knowledge
## 3 Results
### Demand Shifting  
The literature on the topic of flexibility in relation to smart grids ties in with the older debates on demand-side management. The key challenge is to match supply and demand better in order to accommodate the distributed energy sources and reduce CO\({}_{2}\) emissions. Users are expected to respond to information about the availability of electricity or financial incentives, such as dynamic pricing, by shifting the energy load to preferred moments or a combination thereof. They tend to be addressed as isolated individuals making their own, autonomous decisions. The implicit assumption underlying information services is that new knowledge and awareness might motivate users to shift their energy use for environmental or financial reasons. However, there were several examples of \"disappointing\" responses in the investigated projects. In the Jouw Energie Moment (Your Energy Moment) project, for instance, householders had requested for \"smarting\" their electrical heat pumps, but only four out of 38 actually switched it on [11]. Since 2014, several good social scientific studies have been conducted on demand shifting. Most of them related to what is called the \"practice turn\" in social sciences. The idea is that genuine interest in what moves people in their homes to consume energy helps to understand to what extent and under what conditions they may shift their energy consumption to other moments of the day. A first insight is that domestic practices are pinned in time and place, related to relationships within the households, social conventions, and time structures of the activities of members of the households [12; 13]. As a consequence, some practices are more prone to active time shifting than others. In general, cleaning practices (dishwashing, washing, and tumble drying) were found to be most suitable for demand-side response [14; 15]. Practices implied in ambiance regulation, leisure,cooking, and eating, are less easy to change. Solitary tasks are easier to change than collective ones, such as family dining as well as practices that depend on the structure of activities outside the home. Secondly, several authors confirmed that households have to \"learn\" to adapt their demand, i.e., change their practices and start seeing options for doing so [8; 12; 16]. In two projects investigated by [PERSON] [8], the knowledge about household consumption, electricity markets, prices, and electricity system loads had increased. There were, however, also accounts of what could be called \"unlearning\" the practices geared toward demand shifting. [PERSON] [16], for instance, showed that there was a \"response fatigue\" in one of the investigated projects in case of manual feedback and control. Thirdly, flexibility interventions were seen to influence relationships among household members and to even have undesirable effects. [PERSON] et al. [17] emphasized internal household dynamics between men and women. Drawing on two Norwegian smart grid demonstration projects, the provided feedback was found to \"trigger\" learning amongst eager men while alienating or excluding women. Three key issues in relation to demand shifting were addressed in the literature: (1) automation and control, (2) financial incentives, and (3) feedback and communication. (1) A key issue in demand shifting is the level of automation and control. Several authors emphasized that automation defines demand shifting more than economic incentives [8]. While earlier studies raised concerns about a loss of control, more recent studies provided another image [18; 19]. In general, remote or automatic control seems to be acceptable to residents, that is, under conditions. It depends on what equipment is controlled, the information and security of smart techniques provided, and whether they have the ability to override the external control [8; 19]. Results of a representative survey indicated that a direct load control tariff was more acceptable than the time-of-use tariffs presented [18].