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STIR cities: Engaging energy systems design and planning in the context of urban sociotechnical imaginaries

Authors:

Jennifer A. Richter, School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA1

Abraham S.D. Tidwell, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA2

Erik Fisher, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA3

Thaddeus R. Miller, Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University, Portland, USA4

Abstract: Since the first electrification systems were established in the United States between 1910 and 1930, energy systems governance at the municipal level has included competing visions for how engineering design and energy policymaking should foster particular social outcomes. Using Phoenix as a representative metropolitan area, and the cases of distributed generation and in-home power management devices as examples, this paper explores how the norms and values embedded in energy systems design and planning shape how residents experience change in the energy grid. Through these case studies, the authors argue that such “sociotechnical imaginaries” – collectively formed visions of social life related to science and technology development – are a crucial, yet overlooked, pathway for social science to engage in fostering socially reflexive mechanisms in energy development. To conclude, the authors outline a research program for applying socio-technical integration research (STIR) to developing socially reflexive capacities in municipal energy producing, regulating, and planning institutions. Such a program has the ability to produce a deeper intellectual understanding of how energy development occurs, and in doing so generate new pathways for fostering cultural and material changes in the structure of contemporary energy systems.

The Phoenix metro area is located in an arid region of the American Southwest created by the

Rio Salado (Salt River) basin that covers almost 2000 square miles. Phoenix is the largest city in

the region, and the seat of Maricopa County, with a metropolitan population that exponentially

increased from 331,770 in 1950 to 4,009,000 in 2015 (Theobald 2015). This incredible

population surge was enabled by a political system that privileged the business and land-owning

elite that dominated Arizona politics after World War II, and who were heavily focused on

increasing economic growth by luring wealthy retirees and military-industrial complex                                                                                                                          1  Corresponding author: Jennifer Richter. Address: PO Box 875603, Tempe, AZ 85287. Phone: 480-965-7682. Email: Jennifer.richter@asu.edu

2  Address:  PO Box 875603, Tempe, AZ 85287. Phone: 540-303-2579. Email: Abraham.Tidwell@asu.edu  3  Address:  PO Box 875603, Tempe, AZ 85287. Phone: 480-286-8767. Email: Erik.Fisher.1@asu.edu  4  Address: PO Box 751-CUS, Portland, OR 97207. Phone: 503-725-4016. Email: Thaddeus.Miller@pdx.edu

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corporations such as Motorola and General Dynamics (Needham 2014). Their values and beliefs

shaped the growth of human activity in Phoenix, and the subsequent energy systems they created

and supported, were instrumental to the economic activity that has supported the area. The

culture of Phoenix as a place and as a destination was established during this time as a desert

imaginary- a place where the new innovations and leisure of the modern age could

simultaneously emerge, reclaiming the vast, “empty” and inhospitable wasteland of the Sonoran

desert, transforming it into a productive and politically important region of the United States.

However, future growth is now dependent on aging energy and water systems, typified

by the Roosevelt Dam originally completed in 1911 to hold water from the Salt River for

agricultural irrigation, and the Glen Canyon Dam built in the 1950’s to provide energy to move

water to the Phoenix area, 200 miles south. Adjacent to Glen Canyon is the Navajo Generating

Station, a coal-fire power plant built in the 1980’s on Navajo Nation land in the Four Corners

area, also meant to feed the energy and water needs of the growing Phoenix metropolitan area.

These mega projects rerouted rivers, created enormous artificial aquifers and established a

pattern of energy production that took energy from far-away places and transmitted it to the

metro area (Needham 2014).

These water and energy systems, and how they configure the lives of residents of

Phoenix today, are neither accidental nor a “natural” outcome of market activities. They are the

products of particular visions – or “sociotechnical imaginaries” – of how science and technology

should shape the orderly and beneficial development of society, visions that articulated endless

economic growth based the ideas of American exceptionalism from the 1700’s stemming from

bountiful natural resources (Smith and Marx 1994). This paper seeks to untangle two aspects of

energy transitions in the American West: First, this paper describes how energy patterns in the

region were established, using the Phoenix metro area as an exemplar of how these energy

systems led to the establishment of a 4.5 million person city in a region with only 10 inches of

rainfall per year. It is crucial to have a deeper understanding of the imaginaries that drove,

shaped, and led to the implementation of and commitment to this system, in order to understand

current controversies over how those energy systems should and must change to meet

contemporary understandings of the ecological limitations of the region.

Second, this paper will examine two case studies that illustrate competing energy values

and goals for the Phoenix area. These cases are not unique to the city, but are representative of

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battles underway throughout the United States over what kinds of values will shape and drive the

next energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Using the examples of distributed

generation of solar energy, and user-based systems of self-metering, we demonstrate how these

are also intensely regional, local, and individual issues, reflecting diverse value systems from

diverse stakeholders. It is critical to understand these approaches in order to comprehend why a

shift to more flexible, less centralized energy systems is a controversial topic in the US.

Furthermore, these cases are reflective not only of the infrastructural constraints posed by the

design and operation of the current electrification grid, but also the importance of understanding

the imaginaries that underlie energy systems development, in order to develop methodologies

that can heighten awareness of these imaginaries in order to productively engage with their

influence over design, policy, and operation.

To address this final point, we will introduce a method for engaging with energy system

designers and planners. This approach, called Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR) has

been used in laboratory settings in order to expand, change, or redirect research towards

incorporating larger social value considerations as they emerge (Fisher and Schuurbiers, 2013;

Flipse et al., 2013; Schuurbiers, 2011; Stilgoe et al. 2013). Our version, which we have dubbed

STIR Cities, is a more comprehensive approach to understanding how a large sociotechnical

system like energy production and distribution that drives the urban centers and agricultural

systems of the American West is the product of specific goals and values by planners and

practitioners (STIR Cities Project Description). Today, different values are at play in Phoenix,

and we are witnessing a complex and unruly transition from fossil fuel-based energy sources to

potentially more renewable and sustainable forms of energy that may lead to more resilient

communities, but will certainly change the relationship between energy consumer, energy

producer, and the urban public institutions such as planning offices and universities engaged in

the transformation of Phoenix. This is especially important for the American Southwest, which

was “discovered” by European explorers and settlers during an unusually wet period for the

Southwest (Steinberg, 2009). Today, the West has reverted to a more arid state, and the forecast

for the next century due to changing climate patterns is for much more intense periods of aridity

punctured by intense weather events that will strain these aging energy systems, even as

populations continue to grow (Ye and Grimm 2013, Cayan et al 2010, Reisner 1986). Therefore,

STIR Cities can be a useful tool for understanding the scope and influence of different

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viewpoints, and then integrating those concerns before technologies, systems, procedures—and

the expert performances that produce and reproduce them—are fully designed and implemented

on larger scales. In doing so, our paper answers the call by scholars of the social dimensions of

energy systems to recognize (1) the contingent nature of our current energy systems, and (2) to

direct energy systems scholarship towards explicating the values and assumptions that underlie

these large technoscientific projects (Miller, Richter, & O’Leary 2015; Sovacool and Brown

2015). If energy systems are, as these scholars argue, always in a process of making and

unmaking, engaging directly with those parties who have articulated the visions of paradise in

the desert that underlie Phoenix has the potential to catalyze the kind of reflective thinking that

could transform energy systems design and planning, as well as the energy systems themselves.

Energy systems and sociotechnical imaginaries in the United States

Energy is, as the physicist Richard Feynman remarked once, a “very subtle concept” (Feynman

2011[1969]). As a scientific concept, it exists in a socially-inflected space where, at least since

the late 19th century, it has informed everything from patterns of industrial operations to daily

human behavior (Rabinbach 1991; Smith 1998). Yet it is more than a social concept, for patterns

of energy production and consumption are “realized through artefacts and infrastructures that

constitute and that are in turn woven into bundles and complexes of social practice” (Shove and

Walker 2014, 42; Laird 2013). Human societies materialize energy, and in doing so, articulate

the kinds of worlds they imagine are necessary and “good” for the polity writ large.

The history of energy in the United States demonstrates this point – the rise of coal as a

major source of energy for Americans required the construction of a multitude of technologies

and new ways of conceptualizing what “consuming” energy looked like. Christopher Jones’

(2015) study of energy infrastructures in the mid-Atlantic region shows that anthracite, the hard

coal synonymous with Pennsylvanian coal production, only rose in prominence through the co-

production of systems of moving resources and a population that saw coal as the qualitatively

and quantitatively “better” source of heating. Similarly, other studies of electrification in the 20th

century emphasize that at the outset of electrification, shifting energy production and

consumption patterns on a larger scale would require enrolling the populace in a process of

imagining different forms of life and livelihood, facilitated by new energy sources (Hughes,

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1982; Nye 1990). This is true not only of the Eastern part of the US, but also in the West, where

the Colorado Plateau became a central nexus of energy production due to its expansive coal

mines, and subsequent construction of coal-fire power plants such as the Navajo, Mojave, and

Four Corners Generation Stations that were constructed after WWII (Needham 2014).

These processes were neither inclusive nor universally positive – like all other technological

systems, energy systems are politics by infrastructural means, and choices of design are equally

choices of who can participate in a new energy system, where capital will flow and, importantly

for justice considerations, who will receive the energy produced and who will bear the negative

effects of energy production (see Mitchell 2011). Much of this energy infrastructure work

continues to occur within the hands of a few small groups in societies: utility engineers and

managers, regulatory bodies, city planners, and energy technology corporations. Energy systems

design has, and continues to be, a process of these groups (amongst others) articulating

“collectively imagined forms of social life and order” (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, 120), or

“sociotechnical imaginaries” as to what the grid should do and, importantly, how energy

producer and energy consumer are networked together. These imaginaries inflect planning and

design choices, choices that are materialized in systems and, in the case of Phoenix, are coded as

necessary for large-scale human habitation of the northern Sonoran. Sociotechnical imaginaries

bring to bear an element much of the larger body of research on energy and society have failed to

do – the “integrated material, moral, and social landscapes” (Jasanoff and Kim 2015, emphasis

added) that underlie how these aforementioned experts materialize our “energetic” world.1

The ideal American lifestyle of the mid-20th century, depicted through the objects of an

electrified and energetic culture, was built on this cultural history of electrification and

transformation of the home, community, and region writ large (Cowan 1983). However, in an

America suffused with discourses of economic security, national security, security of the free

world, and security of the home, energy development and the productivity of the American

people through energy became a moral necessity of national development (Tidwell and Smith

2015). The Southwestern U.S. exemplifies this pattern, where the ideal of a converting a desert

“wasteland” into a productive and useful part of the nation fueled the drive to divert water to

agricultural purposes and eventually for energy as well (Reisner 1986, Wilshire, Nielson and

Hazlett 2008). By the 1950’s, military installations and the post-WWII baby boom, coupled with

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cheap housing and cheaper electricity provided by the dams and coal plants of the West, the

American Southwest was one of the fastest growing areas of the nation.

These energy systems were, and still in many ways are, predicated on a pattern typified

by the displacement of environmental burdens related to energy production on to marginalized

communities in order to supply urban centers with plentiful energy and water. This was an

approach developed in an era (1940’s- 1960’s) that took advantage of lax environmental

regulations, little local opposition, low population density, racially prejudiced land policies, and

arid geographies to convert lands that were characterized as empty, desolate, and useless into

productive resources (Needham 2014; Kuletz 1998). For instance, the above-mentioned energy

plants place a disproportionate burden of air and water pollution on members of the Navajo

Nation living near these plants, even as they provide an economic engine for some members of

the Navajo community (Needham 2010, Necefer et al 2015), though only about 30% of residents

on the Navajo Nation have access to electricity (Landry 2015). Yet, as we have outlined earlier,

not all of these elements of those visions of the future that underlie Phoenix’s development

continue to play a direct role. Understanding how to address the intersections between what

imaginaries built the electrification grid Phoenicians inhabit, and those currently driving the

development of grid transformations, requires first grounding these larger histories within the

context of material systems that residents encounter on a daily basis.

The following case studies illustrate two examples of the variety of energy system

technologies and controversies encountered in Phoenix today. They are sites of contestation over

not only the future of energy in the West, but also over what ideologies and values will drive

future energy transitions, including what kinds of sources will be used to produce energy in the

future, how centralized or dispersed energy production and consumption will be, and who will

control energy production and how it will be used. These examples show the complexity of

energy systems, and the different values embedded in those systems. By tracing the values

expressed in these systems, including who the major drivers are and how they articulate specific

ideas related to energy-based sociotechnical imaginaries, it becomes clear that struggles over

energy system transformation in the Phoenix metro area are not only about electricity, but also

about making the future of electricity production in the Valley mesh with the social, political,

and cultural values of different kinds of producers and consumers. These examples are

necessarily intertwined and overlapping, and provide insight into the ways that the norms of

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growth and modernity through electrification, municipality-utility relations, infrastructural lock-

in, and the desert landscape itself order the ways in which Phoenicians design, encounter, and

interact with energy in the “Valley of the Sun.”

Utilities and energy production: Arizona Public Service, Salt River Project, and distributed

generation in Phoenix

The two major utilities in Phoenix are Salt River Project (SRP) and Arizona Public Service

(APS). While they are both major providers of electricity and leaders in solar energy

development, their historical models are vastly different and reflect back on how they currently

engage with consumers and the various municipal and state level agencies engaged in energy

development. Early residents of modern Phoenix developed a series of ditches and canals,

partially drawing on those still visibly left by the Hohokam people during the 1100’s, but mostly

constructing their own, to irrigate crop fields, provide water for the townspeople, and partially to

provide rudimentary sewage (Ross 2011). These canals, rudimentary at best, were supplemented

by a series of wells throughout the city, the majority of which were in private hands until the 20th

century. The Salt River Valley Water Users Association (SRVWUA), the first segment of SRP’s

business, stems from a similar response by landowners on the eastern edge of the valley to

develop the reservoirs necessary to sustain year round agriculture. Funded through the National

Reclamation Act of 1902, the Roosevelt Dam would begin a series of events marking the

longstanding relationship between municipal Phoenix as a water purchaser and the SRVWUA as

a key provider (Kupel 2003, 80). As an organization, it was ostensibly owned by the landowners

it served, but due to the land-ownership centric structure of the leadership election system (a vote

per acre), was dominated by a handful of large landowners in the east valley. The SRVWUA at

this stage was not a power provider; Phoenix had relied, since prior to incorporation, on a

municipal provider of electricity and fuels, including the power produced from the initial

hydroelectric generators installed on Roosevelt Dam, the Central Arizona Light and Power

Company (CALAPCO). By the 1920s both companies were building competing grids in the

valley; under arrangement the two companies agreed to split the valley – with CALAPCO taking

downtown Phoenix and the north and west valleys and SRVWUA most of Tempe and all of the

south and east valleys (Needham 2014, 39).

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By 1936, the State of Arizona restructured the legal boundaries of agricultural projects

like the SRVWUA, and a second company – the second half of today’s SRP – the Salt River

Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District was formed (SRP 2015a; ibid). Today

these two divisions operate as a seamless single organization, SRP. CALAPCO would go

through a number of mergers and acquisitions before emerging in the 1950s as Arizona Public

Service. SRP’s status as a state-owned utility and part of the State of Arizona means that unlike

APS (which is a publically traded company) it has no responsibility to adhere to the rulings of

the state’s utility regulatory board, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC). However, it is

generally understood by energy professionals in the valley that SRP will, unless mandated to do

otherwise by the state legislature (to which it is directly responsible), follow the rulings of the

ACC. This byzantine set of relationship between SRP, APS, ACC and the state legislature are

crucial for framing the relations of energy systems technologist, business professionals, and

policymakers that underlie the current controversies over distributed generation.

Controversies over net metering are an instructive and illuminating example of a complex

sociotechnical system relating to solar energy, illustrating the gulf between public

understandings of energy production and those of utilities. For the members of the public, net

metering (NEM) policies—which credit solar energy system owners for the electricity they send

back to the grid—offered by APS were an attractive incentive for investing personal funds into

solar photovoltaic (PV) units. While several versions of an NEM policy had been in play since

1993, the current version was passed in 2008 and has been controversial. Distributed generation

PV systems also became more popular due to favorable credits offered by the federal

government, which offered a 30% tax credit for renewable energy systems and efficiency

measures on private residences passed as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

of 2009. The ACC also passed a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) in 2006, which set a state

standard that 15% of energy produced in the state must come from renewable resources by 2025,

with 15% of that energy coming from renewable energy credits (REC), and 30% provided by

distributed generation, and half of that distributed generation from residential solar units (SEIA

2013).

Both SRP and APS have struggled with containing the effects of increased numbers of

customers who were promised net metering when they installed distributed generation units on

their residences. In 2013, APS, sought permission from the ACC to cancel the NEM program

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that had led to spike in distributed generation (DG), or rooftop solar, installations over the

previous decade. APS argued that the increase in solar customers had led to a “cost shift” from

DG customers to non-solar customers. Without an increase in fees to solar customers to offset

their net metering, APS argued that non-solar customers would have to shoulder more of the

costs of grid maintenance. In order to eliminate this cost shift, the average bill for a solar

customer would therefore increase an average of $50-100 per month, negating the economic

advantage of installing a rooftop solar system. In 2013, APS requested that the ACC allow APS

to impose a fee on solar customers, in addition to eliminating net metering. During this time,

APS provided money to an anti-solar non-profit group that produced and ran television

commercials that portrayed solar customers as exploiting the grid to their own benefit and at the

expense of other non-solar customers (Trabish 2013). APS, along with its parent company

Pinnacle West, also lobbied heavily for two anti-solar candidates for the ACC, leading to

accusations of collusion between the ACC and APS and questions of whether a regulated

monopoly should be funding the campaigns of candidates for the board that is meant to regulate

them (Purcell, Chediak, and Newkirk 2015). The ACC agreed to a $0.70/kW fee, which

averaged to about $5 per customer per month (Energy Policy Innovation Council (EPIC) 2013).

But the ACC did not allow for APS’ original request that would have amounted to about $50 per

solar customer. SRP is in a similar situation, though it is not regulated by the ACC, which

allowed the utility to pass its own rate increase for distributed generation customers in 2015,

raising their rates to about $50-$100 monthly per solar customer (Randazzo 2015a). Also in

2015, the ACC is reviewing the case for a rate increase for APS’ solar customers again, causing

more uncertainty and doubt regarding the future of distributed roof top generation in Arizona.

Public groups, such as Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed (TUSK) and Chispa, a pro-solar

group that focused on access to solar energy for Hispanics in Phoenix, as well as hundreds of

solar customers who attended public meetings held by APS and SRP to protest these rate

changes, argue that DG requires a substantial investment by residential customers, the energy

produced is distributed to other customers, and they have the right to produce energy

independently and individually. In other words, in their view, utilities do not have to be the sole

distributers of electricity in the Valley, and energy is inherently an issue of justice in terms of

distribution, not merely one of economics or technological systems. In these scenarios, DG is a

site of contestation over the social as well as the economic value of solar energy.

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Controversies over NEM exemplify shifting roles for both utilities and consumers of

electricity. The crux of these issues is how to accurately and legitimately account for different

ways of valuing energy. DG customers no longer see themselves solely as consumers, but rather

as producers of energy. As such, utilities can take advantage of the electricity produced by DG

systems to supplant electricity that would have come from another natural gas or coal plant,

negating the need to construct more centralized plants. Another issue with NEM rate changes is

that the method that utilities use to value DG solar is limited to narrow economic measures that

are based on the centralized role of utilities in producing energy. While this is true today, in the

future, the production of energy may become less centralized due to DG. Solar installations

companies and DG producers are challenging the utilities’ narrow valuation of DG, arguing that

the benefits of DG are being ignored because they don’t mesh with the traditional production

cycle of utility-distributed energy. Meanwhile, utilities are trying to incorporate solar generation

in a manner that works with the existing grid in a predictable manner that is reliable. As Frank

Laird has noted, “Energy policy advocates are motivated by the meanings they attach to the

technologies they advocate” (2001: 5) and in these scenarios, energy can be seen as an inherently

sociotechnical system. Incorporating a plurality of values into this system is a key component of

recognizing the social aspects of energy production. How that will be done in a fair and

equitable manner that recognizes new energy systems and components, as well as new

consumers and producers, is a central energy challenge Arizona is facing today.

Salt River Project’s M-Power®: In-home device energy monitoring technologies

A perpetual challenge utilities face in daily business operations is dealing with customers who

fail to pay their bills. These arrears become both a burden for the utility, sometimes mounting

into the millions of dollars. Should a utility not be able to address the cost, it may seek to transfer

this cost to its wider customer base. SRP, as a quasi-state owned utility, is in a particularly

challenging position here, as it exists neither as a clearly identified “private” enterprise (such as

APS), nor as a trust of the entire state’s populace (due to the voting system under which it

operates). At a macro-level, this conundrum pertains to the role of these semi-monopolistic

enterprises in a democratic (and ostensibly liberal economic) society. From the perspective of

sociotechnical imaginaries, however, attempts to answer such questions should be grounded in

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institutionalized understandings of the common good and the local performances of these

understandings on the part of expert organizations and practitioners. Rather than starting with

normative questions such as what energy policies and technological designs are best, we seek to

understand how such questions are already being answered by the institutional arrangements and

expert performances; how has SRP, for example, designed electrical distribution and

consumption systems, and what do these systems say about how SRP sees its role as a policy-

through-technology making agent in the valley. M-Power®, SRP’s pay-as-you-go billing

program, provides a constructive window through which to explore these questions of energy

systems design and society. M-Power® was one of the earliest attempts by a major utility to alter

the producer-consumer relationship from one of monthly bills and utility readers to a system

where, as they claim, the consumer is now empowered to control their electricity consumption

(Salt River Project 2013).

In 1993, the Arizona Legislature mandated that SRP develop a system for assisting low-

income households with lowering energy consumption and meeting payments (Neenan and

Robinson 2010). The system they devised was a pay-as-you-go process, coupling a specifically

designed meter and user display terminal (UDT). M-Power® is not “smart” in the sense that it

facilitates a two way process of communications between the utility and the consumer – rather,

the meter transmits consumption information to the UDT which then accounts for the cost of

power based on the time of year (M-Power® uses a two-tiered flat rate system) and deducts it

from the money uploaded to the UDT. Money is added to the UDT via a “smart card” – these

cards must be taken to a SRP pay station (located in grocery stores, gas stations, and SRP

offices) and loaded with money (via check or cash) beforehand. Since the inception of this

program, the M-Power® system has expanded from 100 low-income homes to being available

throughout the SRP service area. SRP argues that such systems offer a lower upfront cost

alternative for customers, allow those who cannot pay a large lump sum at the end of the month

to continue paying their bills as money becomes available, and helps customers understand their

energy consumption patterns.

Despite these purported advantages, and the high customer satisfaction numbers SRP

reports, a number of systemic sociotechnical patterns remain attached to M-Power®. First

amongst these is the claim made that M-Power® targets low-income customers. Regardless of

the intentioned actions of SRP, the design of the system has produced outcomes where, as

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reported in the Electric Power Research Institutes’ 2010 report, the majority of customers make

less than $30,000 a year and are predominantly Hispanic and African American (Neenan and

Robinson 2010, 4-6). A second pattern pertains to the movement of knowledge of energy

consumption between the consumer and producer. With the larger push amongst technologists

and policymakers towards the transformation of current electrical grids into highly responsive,

multi-directional communication systems (the “smart grid”), SRP has presented M-Power® as a

demand-side response tool. It is important to distinguish the concept of “demand-side response”

from the cost-cutting measures the Arizona legislature outlined in 1993; “demand-side response”

indicates a system of clear knowledge transfer between the utility and the consumer of how

much electricity they are using and, importantly, in such a way that it enables the consumer to

respond accordingly. The Arizona Community Action Association has argued this rhetorical

presentation of M-Power® as enabling conservation, arguing that for low-income residents

conserving electricity is not a salient issue given their capital constraints (Howat and

McLaughlin 2012, 10).2 A quick overview of how the UDT presents information to users appears

to add some credence to this claim; the meter provides basic information pertaining to energy

consumption for the current day and month (in kWh), how much money from the pre-payment is

left, and how much money has been spent during the current day (Salt River Project 2013b). For

comparison, a SRP smart meter customer can access, via their MyAccount internet-based bill

payment system, daily consumption patterns and longer-term (days to months) trends in their

consumption; an M-Power® customer would have to manually record and graph this information

to acquire the same knowledge (Salt River Project 2014a).

A final pattern is the purposeful design of meters that, should money run out, are

designed to shut off power to a home. These features, meant to limit arrears generated from

households where bills are no longer being paid, do not simply turn off power at any time;

“Friendly Credit” periods exist in the evenings and on weekends when it may not be possible for

customers to gather the money or transportation necessary to reach a SRP Pay Station (Salt River

Project 2014b). Consumer advocacy groups have spoken out against such design features,

arguing they unfairly target the poor, the elderly, and families with children (NCLC report), and

SRP has developed exceptions for some of these groups, though at-risk group customers are not

mandated to opt out (Howat and McLaughlin 2012).3 While such exceptions may address

programmatic concerns, such social groups pose broader challenges to SRP that require technical

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expertise to respond to public values, as evident in the following response from SRP’s former

customer service manager (Association for Demand Response & Smart Grid 2012, 9):

“There is a belief out there that the utility is the last bastion of easy credit for low-income customers and that we should do everything we can to keep the power on” says Mike Lowe. “We have done a number of things to help with that. If you get disconnected, you have the option to go on prepay and pay off your arrearage over time.”

Constructed in this fashion, SRP seeks to operate like any other private enterprise and must

design its policies to protect its bottom line—despite playing a major role in constituting the

metropolis of Phoenix (certainly the city would not exist as it does today); at the same time, as a

state subsidiary, it is obligated to be responsive to the political imaginaries that constitute the

state of Arizona.

These three patterns of design—one pertaining to the relationship between the M-

Power® system uptake and consumer identity, the second outlining the patterns of knowledge of

electricity consumption uptake, and finally the temporal and capital dynamics of a pay-as-you-go

design—elucidate the power of infrastructural systems to pattern lived experience (Edwards

2004). This should not be taken as a critique of intention – infrastructural sociotechnical systems

such as the electrical grid are built with a variety of norms and values embedded within them and

exhibited through the execution of technological design. Yet they reflect, in many ways, the

ambiguous relationship between the Phoenix polity and the institutions they ostensibly have

input in operating. Exploring cases such as M-Power® and distributed generation, how Phoenix

energy systems design relates to these underlying sociotechnical imaginaries of transforming the

desert through power, and how current “smart grid” developments inflect design and policy

choices (Slayton 2013), is a crucial step towards asking the larger question of what kind of

energy systems do we want in our urban environments and the American Southwest writ large.

STIR Cities seeks, through the recognition of such patterns of human behavior linked to

technological design of grids, to engage productively in the design process through facilitating

the identification and reflection on these norms and values. More concretely, insofar as patterns

such as these point to the ways in which formal and technical systems are informed by

understandings of the common good, they represent for STIR Cities potential sites of social

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scientific engagement with civic, expert and organizational performances of sociotechnical

imaginaries.

Transforming energy systems through socio-technical integrative research

Socio-technical Integrative Research (STIR) provides a method for technical experts such as

energy system designers and engineers to consciously recognize how their values, ideas, and

interpretations become embedded in the technologies and systems that shape our collective lives

(Schuurbiers and Fisher, 2009: Fisher and Schuurbiers, 2013). The larger body of socio-technical

integration research emphasizes the potentially expansive and responsive relations of experts and

their technical practices to the larger social and cultural context(s) in which they reside. STIR

accounts for the boundary dynamics between experts (hitherto, primarily laboratory research

scientists) and how such societal divides are constructed; its methods emphasize “close

proximity” and engagement with immediate activities in order to document and understand the

possibility and utility of “practical transformation” in the everyday practices of such experts vis-

à-vis their social context(s) (Fisher et al. 2015, 41-2). STIR builds on the larger body of

laboratory studies, studies of expertise in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), the

policy sciences, and John Dewey’s theory of inquiry in an effort to “inform institutional design

aimed at increased responsiveness of expert practices to broader sets of social values by

specifying the conditions that enable and constrain such responsiveness” (STIR Cities Project

Description). Previous STIR studies have accomplished this through collaborative description

and inquiry between research scientists and “embedded humanists.” The latter employ a decision

protocol in order to open up reflection and deliberation within the discursive and material spaces

of laboratory practices (Fisher 2007). The results of collaborative inquiry are analyzed using a

framework for “midstream modulation,” which pertains to the modification of ongoing research

and development processes by means of fostering greater reflexivity towards societal contexts,

and in doing so fostering reflexive and responsible innovation (Fisher, Mahajan, and Mitcham

2006, 492; Owen Macnaghten and Stilgoe 2012).

The context of large-scale energy systems development, however, will require several

adaptations to STIR methodology. As other STS researchers have pointed out, outcomes for

enhancing reflexivity amongst technical experts depend on (1) identifying and justifying sites as

Richter J. et al

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the appropriate locations for fostering change in the larger network of activities (in this case,

urban energy development), and (2) a recognition of where these sites sit within the larger forces

at play (e.g., national energy development, urban non-energy related development) (Wynne

2011). STIR Cities will explicitly capture these questions, both in terms of how the study will be

carried out and in terms of how we will modify current STIR protocols and practices to account

for the alternative knowledge systems that underlie the production of smart grid technologies,

policies, and practices. STIR Cities consists of a three-year, two city, multi-site study that seeks

to answer the following questions:

(1) How and why are smart energy systems being developed and deployed in urban centers? (Year One)

(2) How are they imagined to meet and create desirable forms of social and technological order? (Years One and Two)

(3) To what extent do engagements with diverse technical experts across these systems foster reflexive learning and deliberation over broader emerging alternative forms of social and technological order, and ultimately inform expert practices and technological design choices? (Years Two and Three)

Previous STIR projects embedded humanists in engineering and science laboratories for (often

comparative and sequential) 12-week studies. STIR Cities’ multi-sited approach, however, and

its focus on longer-term outcomes suggest that our engagements should occur not over 12 weeks

and sequentially, but over 12 months and simultaneously. To date, STIR studies have not

consistently employed a post-program evaluation phase to document whether social science

engagement continues to foster reflexive expert practices and the alignment of innovation goals

and societal concerns. Year One of STIR Cities will thus focus on capturing historical,

documentary, and ethnographic evidence on the underlying imaginaries that inform the everyday

practices of technical experts engaged in urban smart grid development. Ethnographic data

collection will also serve to inform how the STIR protocol should alter to address the differing

social and cultural dynamics of the energy policy and development space. It is our expectation

that actors in this space, unlike scientists in academic laboratory settings alone, will express more

reflexivity towards the societal outcomes of their work. Capturing where these cognitive

boundaries exist and are performed by actors will be crucial for reflexive engagement in Year

Two, as will the empirical documentation of changes in reflexive learning, value deliberation and

Richter J. et al

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practical adjustments during the active engagements. Year Three will address the question of

longer-term, post-study evaluation, and empirically examine how experts may continue to

change their practices as well as their more general performances of sociotechnical imaginaries

and recognition of societal values related to smart grid development.

In Phoenix, sites of engagement were evaluated based on their larger influence on the

network of development around smart grid technologies. The initial list included, but was not

limited to: city planning offices (City of Phoenix, City of Tempe, City of Chandler, for example),

utility smart grid program management offices (APS and SRP); the Arizona Corporation

Commission (AZCC); individual power plants (such as the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating

Station, or the Ocotillo power plant); and local university engineering research groups engaged

in locally or nationally-funded smart grid projects.4 These sites played a role in previous smart

grid developments, and in turn are appropriate locations to document and engage with the

performances of experts who have already had a material impact on the lives of citizens via

energy system technologies. For example, low-income family smart energy programs (such as

M-Power®) have included such varying actors as the City of Phoenix Public Works office,

Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability, SRP, APS, and the Arizona State

Legislature (Dalrymple 2014; Neenan and Robinson 2010).

Mapping the network of relations that underlie smart grid development in an urban

setting, and using this space to target key sites for productive embedded engagement with

technical experts, will serve not only to make explicit and visible in everyday experience the

performances that underlie how we conceptualize our energy-centric society, but in doing so

foster a space for reflexive engagement towards altering practices to incorporate the societal

concerns outlined in the case studies above. Energy systems designs and social outcomes are not

inevitable; they are the product of a cultural history of energy producing, transporting, and

consuming infrastructures, embedded in a system of social norms and values and developed by

experts who only ever see a part of the very systems they work with daily. Productive and

reflexive engagement, such as is the objective with STIR Cities, has the potential to inflect not

only the devices and systems Phoenicians encounter, but also how they experience the meaning

and materiality of these systems as a matter of their daily lives.

Funding:

Richter J. et al

17  

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1535120.

Notes:

1. The exception to this is the work on social movements – as Hess (2015) points out, there are many synergies

between Social Movement Studies (SMS) and Sociotechnical Imaginaries. We agree with his emphasis on

tracing the social position and power dynamics underlying the production of imaginaries, and will address

this element in more depth during subsequent STIR Cities studies.

2. Studies since the first Oil Crisis in the 1970s also indicate that lower income families in urban areas tend to

be the first to cut their energy consumption when prices rise, indicating that these individuals and families are

conscious energy consumers, albeit unwillingly (see Unseld, Morrison, Sils and Wolf 1979).

3. These exceptions, however, do not apply to multiple renters splitting a bill via M-Power® - as a 2015 Arizona

Republic article showed (Randazzo 2015b). The lack of an explicit mechanism for addressing these split-bill

outcomes is peculiar, given M-Power® explicitly targets students and other non-related multi-person renters

for the program.

4. For the purposes of anonymity this list is comprised of high-level organizational examples of potential sites,

as opposed to the specific sites our study will include.

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