Energy distribution system operator in interaction with social actors: Three cases

A publicly owned Dutch energy distribution system operator (DSO) interacts during local infrastructure projects with its direct stakeholders to maximize utility in the public interest. These projects are about replacing, relocating, removing or reconstructing parts of the gas and electricity networks. At the same time, this DSO is heavily regulated since the market reforms, although it remained public, but because it remained a monopoly. This regulation forces the DSO to yearly increase its efficiency and production. These two ambitions – made?to?measure projects and yearly more efficiency – increase pressure on the DSO and its interactions to arrange for trade?offs. The authors describe how this pressure works out in day?to day interactions between a DSO and its social environment, its many stakeholders. The empirical question of this paper is how the interaction between a DSO and its stakeholders is currently organized and how this works out for concrete infrastructure projects. The current context of increasingly multilateral, commercial, fragmented and connected energy systems, triggers, and at the same time hinders, great ambitions to design and develop energy systems in more interactive, democratic ways. In this paper, a DSO aspires to make its direct stakeholders essentially leading in the design and development of energy systems. Realizing this ambition ultimately boils down to the operational capacity of a DSO to have lively and flexible interaction with its stakeholders on sensible trade?offs for concrete infrastructure projects. The operational capacity to interact has been studied in three cases. The first is about a DSO interacting with municipalities to fit urban development plans aboveground with the energy networks underground. Note: In the Netherlands, nearly all energy distribution networks are buried underground. The second case is about a DSO interacting with water boards about the safety risks of current networks buried in dykes. The third case is about a DSO systematically evaluating a diverse portfolio of projects by inquiring customers in order to increase their satisfaction for future projects. For these three cases, we observe in detail how the organizational ambition to increase efficiency thins out the social interaction to arrange for thoughtful trade?offs of different actors that adhere different value systems. The conclusion provides a new perspective on possibilities and limitations of DSO’s to organize forms of interaction with their stakeholders under the current conditions