Paper short abstract:

In this paper, we describe the assemblages and functioning of conventional energy grids at the beginning of the smartness process. This exercise is useful as it makes possible to pinpoint obstacles,resistances, conflicts, differences in the process of energy grids' democratization and aligning.

Paper long abstract:

Usually, the description of an energy smart grid consists of a list of properties that the grid needs to get to be called "smart". Thus, smart grids are tools that "can make imaginable the management of direct interaction and communication among consumers, households or companies, other grid users and energy suppliers". A smart grid give smart information, allows for savings, allows for good and real-time information, connect providers and users. Yet, what is still lacking in the claim for smart grid is an ontological dimension of both energy and grid. In our idea it is not enough to enunciate an amount of technical characteristics that should mark the grid and its smartness. What we are trying to do is to provide a deeper and more complex frame for the energy smart grid implementation. It should be useful to understand problems in the process of implementation. To accomplish this task, we use two main perspectives. The first one is to conceive energy grids as technological zones, in which standard metering, communication infrastructures, and social evaluation assemble. The second one is to conceive energy grids as apparatuses in which asymmetries of power, information, decision-making, intensity, constitutes the ontology of the grid itself.