Aude Danieli: The ‘socialisation’ of the smart meter: Innovations, controversies and uses in the social spheres surrounding the Linky electricity meter in France

Whilst digital technology is transforming the energy sector, the scale and nature of this transformation remain to be examined. The design of the Linky smart meter has been accompanied since 2005 by numerous attempts to redefine individual behaviour, advocating the emergence of a ‘smart consumer’, based both on the logic of opening up energy markets and on the principles of energy saving and the energy transition. However, the roll-out of this new technology, which has already been in use in many other countries since the early 2000s, has been the subject of debate ever since its experimental launch in 2010.

Challenging the notion of a place-less and history-less rationality surrounding the Linky meter, this thesis in the sociology of innovation sets out to analyse the forms of politicisation and the ways in which the design, reception and operation of this new technology are appropriated. This study highlights that the characterisations of the Linky meter extend beyond the design phase: meaning and appropriations are constructed within the social worlds involved with the Linky meter. At each stage of innovation within the social worlds studied in relation to the Linky meter, new controversies emerge, centring on debates that appear, on the surface, to be very distant from one another. The Linky meter, as an infrastructure for the digitalisation of the energy sector, thus acts as a catalyst for new questions, in the context of contemporary debates on consumption, health, and digital technology, as negotiated by various ‘cause entrepreneurs’, whether professional or not (advocates for personal data protection, groups of people with electromagnetic hypersensitivity, promoters of the energy transition, campaigners for open personal data, and frontline staff). Omnipresent, the figures of the user and the citizen are constantly invoked within these frameworks of criticism: the user as an active participant in their own consumption, those facing energy insecurity, victims of health impacts, people whose privacy is compromised, and so on.

Focusing on the novelty of the Linky meter or the media controversies it has sparked partly obscures the full range of regulatory processes at work within the social spheres surrounding the Linky meter: this thesis demonstrates that the dynamics of these controversies are linked to local specificities (the socio-political history of the regions; associative and political networks; and the characteristics of the existing stock of analogue meters). The study of the service relationship between field staff and customers also highlights the significance of local regulations: following an intense phase of dispute resolution, professionals will redefine the meaning and uses of the infrastructure within the framework of a pacified service relationship centred on the figure of an honest customer kept at a distance from their metering infrastructure. The Linky meter — what it should be, what it ultimately becomes — reveals a plurality of societal models (a society focused on energy savings, a ‘connected’ society, etc.). This thesis is devoted to the analysis of this process, this ‘socialisation’, which underpins the transformation and adaptation of the Linky meter.

This research, carried out in partnership with the Energy, Technology and Society Research Group (EDF Lab), is based on nearly 135 interviews and ethnographic observations (in Île-de-France, the south-west, in Indre-et-Loire and the Lyon metropolitan area), carried out with all stakeholders involved in both the design and roll-out phases, focusing on two contrasting pilot sites for the Linky meter, as well as analyses of media content and historical archives from energy companies.

Members of the jury

• Sandrine Barrey, Senior Lecturer, University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès (Examiner)
• Cécile Caron, Research Engineer in Sociology, Energy, Technology and Society Research Group, EDF Lab (Visiting Member)
• Olivier Coutard, Research Director, CNRS (LATTS) (PhD supervisor)
• Éric Dagiral, Senior Lecturer, Paris Descartes University (Examiner)
• Gérald Gaglio, Professor, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (Jury Rapporteur)
• Benoit Lelong, University Professor, Paris 8 University (Examiner)
• Thomas Reverdy, Senior Lecturer, INP Grenoble (Jury Rapporteur).