Conducting a smarter grid: Reflecting on the power and security behind smart grids with foucault

Abstract

A smart grid is about the delivery of power, but there is power in and behind a smart grid as well. This chapter takes stock of the current debate and the power relations behind smart grids by analysing it through two insights from the French philosopher Michel Foucault, in particular on the relation between ‘power/knowledge’ and his understanding of indirect government through ‘the conduct of conduct’. Based on these insights this chapter makes two arguments. First, that debates about smart grids are hardly about electricity at all but mainly about the infrastructure to gather, analyse and problematize consumption data. In other words, they are about knowledge and in line with a simplified power/knowledge nexus of Foucault this knowledge relates to power and vice versa. Second, while smart grids are favoured to increase consumer choice, they are actually geared towards a particular way of life by organizing the circulation of electricity towards an impeccably behaving consumer. The choices offered to consumers are hence indirectly governed as companies and governments are conducting the conduct of consumers. Based on such an interpretation, there is cause to question the current conduct of smart grids not only from a privacy standpoint, but from a wider understanding on power as well. While smart grids might decentralise and thus democratise electricity production, the centralisation of information inherently negates this decentralisation of production.