User engagement with smart home technology for enabling building energy flexibility in a district heating system

The future low-carbon emission societies rely on energy systems bearing an increasing share of renewable energy sources (RES). Consequently, demand-side management and energy flexibility become a key solution to compensate for the intermittent nature of RES. District heating systems hold a large potential for energy flexibility if households are actively integrated. While previous research and local policies have applied demand-side management such as smart meters, new smart home technology envisions full employment of the flexibility potential of the building stock. Morning energy demand peak is a major concern for district heating systems in Nordic countries. Demand-side management for district heating has thus mainly focused on morning hours peak-shaving. While integrating smart home technology as a demand-side management solution, the household becomes a flexible energy hub for thermal energy storage. While the technical potential of achieving such flexibility has been investigated, less research has been carried out concerning how users engage with smart home technology and how this influences the possibilities for load-shifting of the indoor space-heating demand. By conducting qualitative studies (interviews and ‘show and tell’ home tours) in 16 Danish households, this paper explores how users engage with smart home technology and how this influences the possibilities for load-shifting in a district heating system. The study provides insight into how the occupants interact with different smart technologies providing space-heating control. Results show that engagement with smart home technology must be understood as part of people’s everyday practices. The flexibility in energy demand must be generated by understanding and changing practices to make them more flexible during peak hours. While smart home technology holds the potential for adding flexibility within the district heating system, the technology is rarely used as intended by occupants. Smart home technology is disrupting, and users rapidly create workarounds in order to perform everyday practices. Load-shifting during morning hours is thus a technical possibility, but the dominant techno-economic paradigm embedded in smart home technologies remains a barrier, as the latter must adapt to the everyday practices.