Politics and the dominant actors in the German energy system fear that the politically promised integration of renewable energies in the course of the Energy Transition will lead to losses of control due to increasing volatility, decentralization and heterogeneity of processes and actors. Yet, a novel form of control through the artificial intelligence of smart grids is envisioned that would tame the chaos in the system. To analyze the conditions and effects of smart grids we introduce the Foucauldian concept of a “power/knowledge apparatus” into the study of sociotechnical transitions. It brings into focus the entwined changes of positions of actors, knowledge and power constellations and their effects. These are crucial to innovation and transformation processes, yet the question how they emerge is only marginally addressed in other science and technology studies approaches. The article analyzes the problem framing and solution by smart grids as an emerging power/knowledge apparatus which implies a comprehensive re-arrangement of the power/knowledge constellations in the energy system. The order and ordering of the emerging apparatus of transformation is getting visible by an empirical case study based on expert interviews and document analysis. The apparatus aims at and engenders a permanent experimentation of all relations between the actors, organizations, techniques, knowledges, etc., which are included in an energy system based on the envisioned smart grid.
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Lösch et al. (2016) studied this question.
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