Exploring peer-to-peer returns in off-grid renewable energy systems in rural India

Exploring peer-to-peer returns in off-grid renewable energy systems in rural India: An anthropological perspective on local energy sharing and trading

Singh, A. (TU Delft Design Conceptualization and Communication; NHL University of Applied Sciences)
Strating, Alex T. (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Romero Herrera, N.A. (TU Delft Design Conceptualization and Communication)
Mahato, Debotosh (JEEViKA)
Keyson, D.V. (TU Delft Design Conceptualization and Communication)
van Dijk, Hylke W. (NHL University of Applied Sciences)

2018

Within the areas of distributed, off-grid, and decentralized energy, there is a growing interest in local energy exchanges. A crucial component of an energy exchange is a return provided by an energy-receiver to an energy-giver for the energy provided. The existing energy literature on such returns is primarily limited to monetary returns and lacks a critical discussion on the different types of monetary and non-monetary returns possible and variation in people’ preferences for these. Based on an ethnographic ‘research intervention’ study conducted at two off-grid villages in rural India for 11 months, this article presents a sociocultural understanding of returns. The article presents a classification of returns consisting of three types, i.e., in-cash, in-kind and intangible, and proposes a conceptual model of ‘returns-continuum.’ The article showcases how people's preference for a type of return varies with the nature of their social relationships with each other and suggests that configuring a return is not merely an economic act but a complex sociocultural process. Finally, the article recommends to energy researchers and practitioners to enable diversity in returns, to acknowledge dynamics of social relations in returns, to interconnect energy economy with the local in-kind economy, and to engage with ethnographic approaches.

Anthropology of energy
Payments
Peer-to-peer energy trading
Rural electrification

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:de701c6a-cfd8-418d-b7de-f0b3966f23ed

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.07.021

2214-6296

Energy Research and Social Science, 46, 194-213

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2018 A. Singh, Alex T. Strating, N.A. Romero Herrera, Debotosh Mahato, D.V. Keyson, Hylke W. van Dijk