Domestic photovoltaic systems: the governance of occupant use

ABSTRACT

Housing is responsible for 29% of all CO₂ emissions in the UK, yet there is still limited understanding of why housing routinely uses more energy than predicted, resulting in a performance gap. Recent studies attribute this gap to insufficient use of energy-efficient technologies by occupants. This paper focuses on the governance of domestic photovoltaic (PV) systems in the UK during the provision stage, an overlooked area in the previous energy-efficiency studies that have mainly focused on PV adoption and practices by occupants, but only after installation. The notion of translation in Actor Network Theory (ANT) is used to analyse how a network of PV provision actants decides the system design and integration into homes, and how this in turn conditions household participation in this network. Semi-structured interviews and video tours used in four participative community and two non-participative community case studies reveal the impact of non-human actants in terms of how PV scripts and practices are formed by PV professionals. The finding also shows that the nominated ‘procurement occupants’ were the key mediators in the participative projects, while the housing developers were the key mediators in the non-participative projects.

KEYWORDS:

• actants
• governance
• housing
• intermediaries
• mediators
• occupants
• performance gap
• photovoltaics (PV)
• translation network

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Fionn Stevenson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8374-9687

Notes

1 According to Bruno Latour, the word ‘actant’ refers to both human and non-human in a network.

2 FIT consists of two payments made by the energy supplier: generation and export tariffs. For the generation tariff, the energy supplier pays a fixed rate for each kW generated, while an extra payment for the exported energy to the main grid would be also received and assumed to be at a level of 50% of energy generation (Energy Saving Trust, 2014).

3 Agency refers to the actants’ capacity to influence actions and decisions in a network (Latour, 2005).

4 Participants were sent all interview questions and they replied by e-mail or paper format.