Project FLEX-MEDIATION

Excerpt

Variability of renewable energies and intermediation with end users

Gilles Debizet, Professor, Université Grenoble Alpes

ANR reference : 22-PETA-0014

The deployment and integration of renewable energies into the electricity mix is a major challenge for the energy transition. Balancing supply and demand in each section of the grid requires substantial effort. Compared to controllable supplementary production, storage, and grid interconnection, adjusting demand over time requires little additional infrastructure.

FLEX-MEDIATION focuses on mediation activities—financial or otherwise—carried out by intermediary organizations between electricity producers and end users, such as self-consumption collectives, citizen production cooperatives, and electricity aggregators. Qualifying their mediation with end users requires an understanding of the socio-technical system of electricity, both at the national and local levels. The analysis therefore also includes the regulatory and legal dimensions that govern the activities of these intermediaries and their relationship with end users. Energy justice is taken into account in the analysis of regulation, mediation, and their effects. Thus, FLEX-MEDIATION addresses the following questions:

• How is regulation evolving to take into account the variability of renewable energies on the end-user side?
• What types of mediation—existing and emerging, commercial or community-based—are intermediaries conducting with end users?
• How is the variability of renewable energy considered in these mediations?
• Do participation and distribution (of costs and gains) influence the representation of renewable energy variability and the practices of end users?

Keywords: Energy communities, regulation, flexibilities, self-generation, resilience, justice

Tasks

Our researches

Analyze mediators and their influence on usage and end-users

At the local level, the construction and operation of energy communities (citizen cooperatives, self-consumption collectives and aggregators) will be analyzed through the prism of sociology and geography, and then in the evaluation of end-users’ declared practices according to the nature of the mediation.

Investigate the construction of regulation and associated legal frameworks

On a national and European scale, the evolution of regulation and flexibility policies, particularly in terms of demand, will be analyzed from the dual perspective of economic sociology and legal science.

Exchange and produce knowledge, methods, data and results

The project will aim to streamline exchanges within the FLEX-MEDIATION research team, as well as to ensure data sharing, openness and dialogue between international humanities communities, TASE consortia, society and industrial R&D.