“Mama, It’s Peacetime!”: Planning, Shifting, and Designing Activities in the Smart Grid Scenario

In this paper, we describe a research-through-design (RtD) approach to investigate the potential of households’ electricity load balancing in the smart grid. Through the design probe “Peacetime”, householders explore peak hours as opportunities for serene and non-electricity consuming activities. During the 2 weeks, Peacetime was deployed in the homes of three households to explore an alternative framing of non-use of electricity to the commonly used framework for prompting people with feedback on their consumption. Households’ active load balancing included planning of, replacing, reorganizing, and skipping everyday domestic activities. Results indicate that focus could be shifted from restricting electricity use to creating alternatives – leading to a positive framing of load balancing. The scenarios reflected in this paper differ from those of rational energy managers basing decisions of domestic life on complex facts and figures. Scenarios from the study portray how planning, reorganization, and time shifting of activities may be obtained with soft means emphasizing values of well-being and respect of the variation of households’ social contexts.