Together we're smart!: Flemish and Dutch energy communities' replication strategies in smart grid experiments

Increasingly, energy communities engage in smart grid experiments to explore new ways to collectively generate, consume, store, manage, and trade energy. Transition literature puts forward that replication of such experiments is essential for socio-technical transformation. However, in practice many experiments remain rather isolated events that fail to contribute to sustainability transitions. Moreover, while the literature points to the importance of replication, there is little attention to how replication occurs in practice and on the perspectives of actors involved. This paper reports on action research done to explore together with Dutch and Flemish energy communities what replication of community-based Virtual Power Plant (cVPP) experiments means in practice and how this can be achieved. In line with literature, the energy communities considered replication of cVPP as an iterative and multi-dimensional process that includes collective exploration of meaning, searching for necessary resources, building competencies, and implementation of the necessary technological building blocks. In light of identified challenges, the energy communities articulated two strategies, both aimed at collaboration with similar initiatives to pool resources (including shared digital technology). This was considered a viable strategy to confront the current context that is characterized by (institutional) uncertainty and ambiguity. Although the literature distinguishes between growth and replication of experiments, the identified strategies show that this distinction is less clear in practice. ‘Pure’ replication was not considered as the way forward. Rather, it appears that combining replication and growth processes provides opportunities for wider diffusion of the cVPP concept beyond the few resourceful frontrunner energy communities