# Users Empowered in Smart Grid Development? Assumptions and Up-To-Date Knowledge
## 1 Introduction  
Active involvement of users in smart grids is often seen as key to beneficial development of smart grids. This is signaled, among other things, by the abundant use of the term \"prosumer\" and similar terms, such as \"co-provider\", in the context of smart grids. It can also be seen in some of the definitions of smart grids that stress the role of users, such as the following: \"A Smart Grid is an electricity network that can cost efficiently integrate the behaviour and actions of all users connected to it--generators, consumers and those that do both--in order to ensure economically efficient, sustainable power system with low losses and high levels of quality and security of supply and safety\" [1] (p. 2). Energy companies and policy institutions are developing methods to involve the users. The European Commission, for instance, pursues a so-called \"user-centric\" approach, involving an increased interest in electricity market opportunities, value added services, flexible demand for energy, lower prices, and microgeneration opportunities [2]. Scholars have emphasized the importance of active engagement of users, among other things, by stating that they should be an empowered part of the system [3]. It is expected that if users are empowered, smart grids may become an important element in climate change policy and the renewable energy transition. Active involvement of users promoting smart grids is, however, not self-evident. Demonstrations against smart meters in the UK and the USA have shown that users have specific concerns and may actively resist smart developments [4]. In early accounts, several social scientists have warned against the dominant technological focus on the development of smart grids [5, 6]. [PERSON] [6] stated that smart grids may not further the deployment of distributed renewables due to a lack of understanding of how and why users would accept smart grids. He sketched two scenarios. In the first, groups of end users deploy renewable energy sources in microgrids and increase their autonomy in relation to central power suppliers. In this scenario, the common resources, i.e., the locally produced renewable electricity, are deployed optimally. In the second, grid operators gain power by increasing surveillance of domestic consumers and their energy consumption. In this scenario, demand regulation is the main driving force rather than the optimal use of renewable energy. This one may gain dominance as itfits better with dominant relationships in the energy sector and the common, centralized patterns of operating. An inventory of the first developments in practice, i.e., the application of smart grids in the first pilot projects, showed that social aspects have received little attention [7]. There is a strong engineering bias with a focus on new information and communication technologies (ICT), disregarding their interaction with other technological and social aspects of local energy systems. Moreover, economic rationales and automation are central elements of smart grid project designs, even though the projects vary considerably [8]. The roles and interactions of users with other stakeholders, market, and technology development should be evaluated for a solid understanding of smart grid development, especially in the residential sector [9]. There seems to be a contrast between the terminology implying active roles of users and the actual developments. As [PERSON] [10] (p. 82) says, \"Even though users play an important role in the imagination of experts, a gap remains between the experts and those who smart electricity infrastructures will come to affect\". Apparently, different assumptions about how and why users should be involved in smart grid developments co-exist. This raises the questions of what these assumptions are and to what extent these are supported by the current experiences with smart grids in practice. As a first, crucial step to answering these questions, we define the state-of-the-art knowledge on these issues on the basis of a literature review.