Unblock Smart with Social Theory

A cheesy Steve with his smart meter and flex energy tariff

By Steve Hall

Why is it so difficult to get #smartmeters into people's homes? This article speaks about the smartmeter rollout slowing down, and later in the year how government targets may create perverse incentives to do smart meter work over other priorities. Clearly the rollout is a huge technical challenge, and there have been multiple examples of tricky tech not being as magical as hoped.

We might expect the rollout to slow down as those who are more 'willing to accept' the technology already have meters, but what do we do then? Do we, as some suggest, have to start paying people to install meters? Social theory might have something different to say that could save the industry millions.

Currently we think we are working with an 'information deficit' problem, if people only understood the benefits of smart meters, they would become like the cheesy chap in the picture, overjoyed with their smart energy tariff and the meter that makes it possible.

If this were true, then we would have to spend marginally more per consumer until we had rolled out the full program. Can we see the problem? The less willing each person is to 'accept' a smart meter the harder we have to try to convince them and the more expensive (and slow) the rollout becomes.

The solution might lie in a piece of social theory I am developing called 'Relational Economic Sociology'. Instead of thinking about people as 'rational' actors, who only act irrationally (not wanting a smart meter) when they don't have all the information (information deficit model), relational approaches place people in their social world and consider the meanings we make around different economic transactions.

Instead of pushing the 'smart meters are brilliant' button over and over harder and harder, we need to ask 'what do smart meters mean to people' and how can we work with that existing meaning?

We call this process of meaning making 'relational work'. Before we make any purchase, give any gift, buy any service, we first do relational work to decide what it means for us. Doing this relational work creates 'relational packages' which form more or less stable meanings about what a technology is and which of our social worlds it lives in.

Lets take Cryptocurrency as an example. My relational package around crypto currency came about via various social media apps. The people I was seeing and the language I was hearing helped me form this relational package. I am sorry to say that the relational package I built around crypto was far more "casino, gambling, no social value, Influencer grift, definitely an iphone bore, two Audis, and cult of the entrepreneur' than it was "freedom from central banks, forge your own destiny, pioneer spirit, micro-trade to success'.

My relational package around crypto is hostile to the social meaning I have assigned to it, not to crypto itself. It does not matter what the promoters of crypto tell me, because I do not want to 'be' like 'them'*, their messaging is not landing in a place I am willing or able to hear.

What if the messages we are promoting on smart meters around climate, energy savings, smart tariffs, and tech future; land in people's relational packages, who see 'us' with our cheezy smart meter pictures and optimized linkedin lifestyles as something and someone they do not wish to be? How much money do we need to spend on this messaging before we recognise that the louder we shout the less they can hear?

They are also not wrong, they just have different relational package. A smart meter is just a lump of non sentient tech. It doesn't 'know' that it has cultural and social meaning attached to it.

If the objective of the smart meter rollout is to get as many meters in people's homes as possible, we must do much more to understand people's relational packages around smart and then critically, more than critically, do more than just amend the messaging, we need to create ways for smart meters to enable them to be the people they want to be and the do the things they want to do with their energy future.

How do we do this... that's another article ;-)