Social and Economic Implications for the Smart Grids of the Future

This paper discusses the implications of autonomous self* (self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing and self-protecting) systems for the development of the electrical smart grids of the future. It assesses several scenarios of the future development without prioritizing any of them. The paper employs the data from the Smart Metering Electricity Customer Behaviour Trials conducted by the Commission for Energy Regulation and kindly provided by the Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA) to test the consumers’ attitude toward smart meters and adaptive energy tariffs. The findings suggest that when it comes to the implementation of the new approaches to generating, supplying, and monitoring of electrical energy, most of the consumers retain the old-fashioned approach and are driven by the economic incentives. Thence, the developments of the smart grids of the future (or the system will exist beyond these smart grids) is very likely to be shaped by the economic behaviour of the optimizing rational agents on the market