Passive power? Domesticating solar photovoltaic systems in Querétaro, Mexico

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Passive power?

Domesticating solar photovoltaic systems in Querétaro, Mexico

Outi Pitkänen

Master thesis in Culture, Environment and Sustainability

Centre for Development and Environment UNIVERSITY OF OSLO

04.05.2018

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Passive power? Domesticating solar photovoltaic systems in Querétaro, Mexico http://www.duo.uio.no/

Print: Reprosentralen, University of Oslo

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Abstract

This thesis examines how solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have been incorporated into the daily lives of residential households in Querétaro, Mexico. The dissemination of small-scale solar PV systems has rapidly increased in Mexico in recent years. My analysis is based on thirteen interviews with households and my work was further informed by interviews with eleven actors relevant to solar panels and their use within the country. I have used domestication theory in order to explore how PV systems are appropriated, incorporated into the home and daily schedules and used as a way to signal adherence to shared values. Moreover, the thesis draws from practice-oriented approaches to analyze how the PV systems are assimilated into social practices that consume energy.

The Querétaro prosumers appropriated the PV systems because of the savings on their electricity bill, which could be achieved partly because of using the solar electricity itself and partly because of the reclassification of these households’ from a high- consumption tariff to a lower-cost subsidized tariff. This was, however, not the only driver. Comfort and support for renewable energies also played a role in people’s acquisition of a PV system. The thesis also examines how the prosumers relate to the multiple facets of the PV system. Albeit they were not active in monitoring their systems, they made decisions on the capacity of the electricity producing equipment based on their evaluations of what the system should do for them. Apart from the goal of staying under the high tariff limit, several prosumers were guided by the wish to produce solar electricity in proportion to their own level of electricity use.

Additionally, I will discuss how, for many, the underlying reason to invest in microgeneration was that their demand for comfort created the need to manage the resource base of certain practices. The systems became part of the escalation of thermal comfort in particular. Moreover, after the installation of the PV system, people made modifications by changing to electric appliances (notably, preparing food in the oven) because of the increased availability of the resource. However, with some other practices, the electric device would have changed the competencies, meanings and materials inherent to those practices and consequently such technologies were not seen as attractive investments, even if this would save money.

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to a large number of people in Mexico that helped me conduct the interviews for this study, were patient enough to answer my questions, and contributed to my well-being during my 2.5 month stay in the country. I have been, yet again, amazed by how warm-hearted people can be and acknowledge that without all these people, this thesis would have been a rocky and lonely endeavor. The willingness to help a friend or just a stranger made an enormous difference to how this work turned out. My special thank you goes to the PV company that I worked with, including the owners who open-mindedly received me and enabled me to conduct this study, and the various employees who I could always approach with my questions and requests for assistance. Despite examining solar panels critically in this thesis, I appreciate and admire the work that they are doing to promote decentralized energy generation in Mexico.

I would like to thank my supervisor, Tanja Winther, for being a person who I could count on for guidance and inspiration. Her inputs led me to numerous insights that helped me sharpen my arguments and structure my thoughts. I would also like to thank my SUM classmates and other helpful people at SUM who both contributed to my thinking and supported me throughout the entire Master’s program. Erin Dumbauld, Thea Valler, Hilde Nord Anglevik and Hedda Molland deserve a special thanks for helping me parse together this package and motivating me in the last meters of this work. Moreover, Anne-Line Sandåker and Gudrun C.E. Helland, as we all know it, contributed in many ways to improving my student life, and the lives of other SUM students. I also want to thank the 4^th floor dog, Sonqo, for her inputs to my well-being.

In addition, I would like to thank my family for their faith in me and the rest of my friends for being there when I really needed to talk to someone after a long day in front of the computer screen. I am grateful for my roommates – who perhaps heard the word

‘pomodoro’ a few times too many – they deserve a huge thank you for being my Norwegian family and part of the home that I could return to charge my batteries.

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List of figures

Figure 1: Installed capacity and the number of distributed generation systems in Mexico

2011-2017 (CRE 2017) ... 46

Figure 2: Future scenarios for distributed generation in Mexico, in megawatts (SENER 2016b, 99)... 47

Figure 3: Solar water heater and solar panels (right) on the rooftop of a building ... 62

Figure 4: An electricity bill of a household with a solar PV system... 69

Figure 5: A mobile application connected to an internet-connected central inverter ... 73

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List of tables

Table 1: Interviewees ... 28 Table 2: Ownership of household technologies and access to essential services in

Santiago de Q uerétaro and in Mexico in 2015 (INEGI 2016b, 2015) ... 36 Table 3: HCT limits calculated from long-term averages (CFE 2017, INEGI 2014)... 39 Table 4: Electricity prices for different tariff brackets and tariffs in Querétaro from 2008 to 2016, in Mexican pesos (CFE 2017, 2018) ... 40 Table 5: Acquisition of the PV system and the previous tariff ... 52

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1 Introduction

Residential grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems (from now on referred to as solar PV systems or PV system) were first adopted by Mexican homes after they were made legal in 2007 (CRE 2017). The technology has grown in popularity in recent years with the installed capacity of small and medium scale PV systems doubling (approximately) every year from 2013 to 2016 (CRE 2017, 4). It is still a relatively uncommon

technology as the number of microgeneration contracts was at 36,862 at the end of June 2017 (CRE 2017, 5), while the number of such systems in UK and Germany are

estimated to be half a million and a million, respectively (Inderberg, Tews, and Turner 2016). In Mexico, government policy has become more accommodating for solar photovoltaic technologies both in the case of decentralized microgeneration and large- scale centralized generation for the grid. As a consequence of these developments, solar PV systems have gained some ground as an established technology, at least in some Mexican communities. Querétaro households have on average a relatively high standard of living among Mexican states. This could be one reason why the national household survey from 2015 estimated that 0.7 per cent of households in Querétaro state have a solar PV system (INEGI 2016b, 88).

The increased rate of adoption of solar panels is related to national processes. First of all, the Mexican electricity sector is experiencing fast growth, with the sales of electricity from the national grid growing more than 27 % between 2004 and 2014 (SENER 2015, 58). This makes it imperative that the government address the growing needs of the sector. At the same time, the government has set goals to increase

electricity generation from renewable sources. Since Mexico has one of the highest potentials in the world for electricity production with photovoltaic technologies (IRENA 2015, 43), solar photovoltaic technologies could become contributors to this change. The transformations within society itself are closely tied to the adoption of solar PV technologies. While politics, economic circumstances and technology innovation are important factors in the emergence of solar PV technologies, the way energy is

consumed should not be overlooked as a factor explaining shifts in energy production (Shove and Walker 2014, 44-45). In other words, solar PV systems need to be contextualized within the changing uses for energy that result from what ‘work’ the energy is used for (i.e. what energy-consuming activities are done), what artefacts and

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infrastructures are used in these activities and the availability of the kind of energy resources that these activities require (ibid., 42, 50).

While price reductions and government schemes have made solar panels accessible to the middle class in some European countries, solar panels are still too expensive for most Mexicans households. There are some governmental schemes that have been developed to allow a division of the initial costs over several years. However, this is available to a limited number of people, which means that the vast majority of solar PV households have financed the large one-time payment of the system through other means. Moreover, the solar PV owners are more likely to be large energy users because the tariff structure makes the investment profitable only for consumers with a high- consumption tariff (Grande, Islas, and Rios 2015).

1.1 Rationale for research topic

Grid-connected residential solar panels are a form of decentralized energy production that has the potential to lead the way to more equitable energy systems in the future.

Although they are a relatively new technology in Mexico, there are households that have lived with them for some years, making it possible to explore their adoption

process after installation. Knowledge on how the panels are adopted can be used to form expectations for the future. This is important because several actors in the market

predict that this sector will grow significantly in the upcoming years (SENER 2016b, 99).

Solar panels are an interesting topic since activity related to both electricity generation and consumption take place in the same location, which makes it possible to observe the links between this nexus and to gather data on both activities simultaneously. Toffler’s (1981) concept of prosumers refers to consumers that take up producer activities.

Prosumers have a new role in both economic terms (i.e. as investors and producers) and civil terms (i.e. new responsibilities and powers). The term is useful for the study of PV system households because PV owners are in contact with electricity generation to a much greater degree than other residential electricity users. The implications of this production-consumption proximity are worth researching because the involvement of microproducers is important to the success of decentralized energy systems. Therefore, it is valuable to study prosumers’ involvement in the management and control of

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electricity flows and the impacts the technology has on their routines that consume energy.

This thesis will explore Mexican prosumers’ activities related to both electricity production and consumption. To achieve this, importance is given to the “systematic scrutiny of the mundane” (Shove 2003, 2, Chappells et al. 2000, 101). The resource that the PV technology produces, solar electricity, becomes an important part of various social practices that households participate in. Social practices (e.g. eating, laundering and commuting) are characterized by their routinized nature. Practices consist of several elements including individual competences, culturally shared knowledge and material circumstances (Shove 2014). This enables placing emphasis not only on symbolic aspects or the rationales people have to changing routines but also on the services and experiences that the solar PV systems enable (Shove 2003, 3-4).

Considering that electricity consumption in Mexico is unevenly divided (Rosas,

Sheinbaum, and Morillon 2010), it is important to look at different consumer segments.

Generally, solar PV owners are more likely to belong to the upper and upper middle class since the purchase is profitable only high energy consumers and possible for those who have ability to cover the cost. This is an important point considering that the differences between socioeconomic groups have increased in Mexico in the recent decades (Rosas, Sheinbaum, and Morillon 2010, Castillo, Peña, and Guardián 2017).

This electricity user segment is also significant because of the impact they could have on the grid. Unlike people with less income, the upper and upper-middle classes are more likely to have technologies such as air conditioning or heating devices that draw a lot of electricity when they are in use, which could contribute to an increase in peaks of electricity demand. Moreover, upper and upper-middle class households are more likely to test new, expensive household technologies that can become mainstream

technologies in the future.

Household energy consumption in Mexico has been largely studied by analyzing national household surveys with quantitative methods (Castillo, Peña, and Guardián 2017, Sánchez Peña 2012, Rosas, Sheinbaum, and Morillon 2010). Most studies on residential PV technology have employed quantitative methods (Grande, Islas, and Rios 2015, Mundo-Hernández et al. 2014) as well, with the exception of analyses of market potential that have used also qualitative data (SENER and GIZ 2012). From what I

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could find, this thesis is the only study that has examined the adoption process of solar PV systems in Mexico from the viewpoint of the households. This is not surprising as the number of microgeneration studies focusing on prosumer households themselves is generally limited (Hansen and Hauge 2017, 1216). An enquiry into this topic, using qualitative methods, can therefore provide valuable information about how energy producing and consuming activities take place in the daily realities of this group of Mexicans and contribute to the study of prosumer households more generally.

To summarize, the study will look at the adoption of a technology that holds a lot of promise for creating more sustainable energy systems especially in contexts where the energy system faces a lot of pressure. My focus is on a socioeconomic group that is influential in the energy provisioning system; and I apply a qualitative approach to a context that has been studied almost exclusively by quantitative methods.

1.2 Research questions

Studies that have looked at prosumers themselves have focused largely on the diffusion and social acceptance of solar panels, asking questions about the motivations and experiences of prosuming (Hansen and Hauge 2017, 1216, SENER and GIZ 2012).

Only a handful of studies have looked at how people adopt PV technology and engage with it (e.g. Hansen and Hauge 2017, Winther, Westskog, and Sæle, in progress).

Although there is not much research on what happens after installation, we know that

“possible behavior after installation may range from misuse,

disappointment/disillusionment and rebound effects, through fit-and-forget (no change), to increased energy awareness, indirect benefits and double dividends” (Bergman and Eyre 2015, 339). Which of these aspects is most prevalent depends on the way the household has adopted it into their lives. Therefore, the first research question asked in this thesis is

1. How are solar PV systems domesticated in Querétaro households?

The word domestication here refers to the process of how we adapt our lives to technologies and, vice versa, how the technologies are modified to fit into our lives.

With its focus on processes, this approach expands the concept of technology adoption beyond the narrow focus on acquisition (Haddon 2011, 313). It can be employed both

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on a micro-level, by looking at how individuals and households take technologies or objects into use, and on a societal level, by describing how an object entered the domestic sphere (e.g. Pantzar 1997). This allows me to explore the roles that households’ motivations and routines, material arrangements, and symbolic values attached to the technology play in the adoption process of the PV systems. Since the solar trend has been growing in Mexico for several years, many users have had the technology for years, making it feasible for me to explore these questions.

As the PV system is domesticated, it is also integrated into energy-consuming practices.

Janda (2007, 4) and Bergman and Eyre (2011) point out that overt focus on the uptake of the technology overlooks the fact that solar PV systems might fall short of the promised emissions reductions due to cultural, technical and behavioral reasons. This study will draw on theories of practice to examine how consumption in the household is influenced by the PV system. Few studies have explored the potential changes in

consumption practices after the installation of a grid-connected solar PV system, therefore the second question this thesis poses is:

2. To what extent and how does the PV system become part of energy- consuming practices?

This question draws from practice theory. By asking this question, the focus will be on how the solar electricity that the PV system generates become part of and modify the practices that include electricity consumption. The term ‘energy-consuming practices’ is used to refer to social practices that include moments of energy consumption (such as heating, cooking and laundering; for a definition of practice, see chapter 2). In

analyzing the role of the solar electricity as a driver of change, other drivers of change in practice are addressed; however, a comprehensive analysis of these affiliated drivers behind each electricity-consuming practice is outside the scope of this thesis.

1.3 Outline of the thesis

This chapter introduced the topic of the study, discussed the rationale of the analysis, touched on some of the key theoretical concepts and presented the research questions.

The next chapter will discuss theories and concepts that I will use to analyze my

findings. Chapter 3 will describe the choices I made in terms of methods and reflect on how various factors had an impact on the interviews. Chapter 4 and 5 will provide

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background on electricity consumption and production in Mexico. In chapter 6, I will present my findings. The first section will provide the background for the following sections by presenting relevant findings from stakeholder interviews. The rest of the sections discuss each step of domestication of the technology and changes in energy- consuming practices after the adoption of solar panels (6.6). Chapter 7 will discuss the findings and present my conclusions.

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2 Analytical framework

This chapter presents the analytical framework of this study, which combines

approaches referred to as domestication theory and practice theory. The chapter begins with a presentation of literature on the relationship of production and consumption in energy systems, which is necessary to correctly conceptualize and contextualize solar panels as energy producing technologies in the household. Then it will present domestication theory and practice theory together with examples from studies on technology adoption. The aim of this chapter is to explain that solar panels should be viewed as artefacts in particular situations (cf.Appadurai 2013) and how they are not simply ‘adopted’ but through domestication come to be “embraced, sidelined or contested within the home” (Judson et al. 2015, 33).

2.1 The interconnected ‘production’ and

‘consumption’

In our daily life, we make the conceptual distinction between ourselves, things inside our homes and the world outside. When we categorize things to make sense of the world around us, we start seeing things as discrete entities and miss how connected our practices are to the context surrounding us. Such thinking overlooks how interconnected different parts of a system are and it is easy to miss connections that exist between energy production and energy consumption. The technology should not be ‘black boxed’, pretending that “the world behind the electrical outlet” does not matter (Rip and Kemp 1998, 329). This goes both ways: to understand how a technology is used, or how its use is changing, the system might be equally important as the way the

technology is used at home. These insights, however, rarely make their way into theories of energy consumption.

The concept of systems of provision addresses this by interlinking the providers of energy services, the infrastructures and consumers of energy. This perspective sees that various actors, materials, institutions, agencies and practices constitute the energy provision system (Judson et al. 2015, 33). Energy consumption is not only 'end use' that follows production and distribution but rather the outcome of the interaction between the users of energy, commercial actors, public policy and regulatory action,

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advertisement and distribution of the goods or services (Wilhite and Lutzenhiser 1999, 282). When a household acquires an energy-producing technology, it will not exist in isolation at their home but becomes a part of larger energy systems that are well- established materially, socially, and cognitively (Henning 2000). By keeping this in mind one can avoid analyzing goods and objects in isolation and “without noticing the pre-and co-requisite systems and technologies on which they depend, or the

reconfiguration of ideas, actions and habits associated with their use and appropriation”

(Shove 2003, 11-12).

Conventionally, infrastructure networks have been viewed linearly with resources being captured, produced, and distributed to meet consumer demand (Judson et al. 2015, 33).

This logic of managing supply to meet demand has largely ignored the interconnections and influences between the different actors and elements of the system (Shove and Walker 2010). One way to amend the situation is to view energy systems as

sociotechnical. By conceptually re-establishing the link between consumers and systems of provision it challenges the unilinear management approach of tweaking production to meet demand fluctuations (Chappells et al. 2000, 101). Some have interpreted the term sociotechnical as systems that are comprised of separate social and technical

components, which is a meagre improvement to the prevalent view; a better alternative is seeing such infrastructure systems as being co-constituted in the interaction between the social and technical elements (Bulkeley, Powells, and Bell 2016, 10).

The materiality of the energy systems are still important since the networks are, after all, physically linking consumers and providers. However, energy systems are not merely physical entities but the supply of electricity need to be placed in constant interaction with household practices taking place at the ends of the grid and with other actors. An approach called co-provision interprets people who use a resource provided by a utility as having an active role in the provisioning of the resource. It emphasizes how consumers are also controlling electricity flows by planning their energy use in a certain way in terms of both timing and quantity of energy used (Chappells et al. 2000, 103). In the case of decentralized solar PV generation, both electricity generation and consumption takes place in the same house and, hence, a co-provision approach describes the situation well.

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As Spaargaren (2011, 816) points out, whilst households are ‘being served’ by utility companies they are also reproducing the sociotechnical regimes of those systems. The implication of this is that owners of PV systems do not necessarily need to be engaged directly with the technology since their impact can also be mediated through their

practices of heating or water use, for example. Chappells et al. (2000, 101) argue for not viewing the users as passive:

It may be true to say that the language of peaks and loads fails to interest many households, but the retuning of heating or water systems to provide comfort or cleanliness are part and parcel of the everyday experience. By viewing household involvement in utility infrastructures in this way, it becomes clear that consumers’ habits and practices define the challenges and problems, which utility providers confront in keeping networks as robust, reliable and controlled as possible and in reducing demand.

In the case of solar panels, the households are involved in the micro-level management of production as well as the management of households practices. Grid-connected solar panels are still part of the utility company’s regime where the utility tries to shield consumers from any uncertainties inherent in electricity systems. The owners of grid- connected solar panels never reach their resource ceilings because storage arrangements with the grid even out demand fluctuations, while off-grid producers’ battery packs act as a reminder of the resource problem at hand (Chappells et al. 2000, 101). Through designing material arrangements and framing the use of the technology in a certain way, stakeholders of the energy provision system can influence the way PV owners engage with the provision system as micromanagers (Chappells et al. 2000, 101-102). They influence the user’s feeling of autonomy depending on how much responsibility they delegate to the user and how strongly they impose their ideas on the proper use (Judson et al. 2015, 40). Consumers’ level of engagement cannot therefore be anticipated but should be examined.

Energy provision systems are always organized around and shaped by the properties of the energy carrier. The fact that the energy carrier of solar panels is sunlight might promote the users’ autonomy on the on hand, and restrict it, on the other. While the number of actors involved with the solar technologies can be high, no service is needed for the sales or the transport of the ‘fuel’, sunlight (Henning 2000, 48). On the other hand, the availability of sunlight affects the technology’s performance but is out of the users’ control as well (Turner 2016). Moreover, even if access to sunlight cannot be

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regulated, the electricity grid is regulated through permits, metering, and tariffs, which will have tangible consequences on how energy production will take place.

The implication of co-production for residential PV systems’ standing in energy

systems is that this approach “moves away from conceptualising the fate of innovations as lying in the hands of an individual consumer and engages with the ways production and consumption of energy co-evolve and are mediated through the work of everyday practice” (Judson et al. 2015, 33). Therefore, energy-producing technologies, such as solar PV systems, shape energy provision and simultaneously promote some modes of consumption while restricting others (ibid., 36).

2.2 Domestication

This section will present a cluster of approaches called domestication theory and discuss steps of domesticating technologies using relevant excerpts of literature on the adoption of energy technologies. The domestication approach originated from anthropology and consumption studies as researchers started to pose questions related to the use of objects, such as how technologies entered people’s lives and what symbolic meanings they carried (Haddon 2011, 312). The social shaping of technology became another widely researched topic as researchers started examining how technologies continued to be ‘shaped’ as they were being consumed, and how the interactions between different groups of people affected the design of the product (Pantzar 1997, 60). This could mean paying attention to how marketers catch the attention of – or ‘capture’ – a group of consumers by framing the product as something suitable to their lives and homes (Silverstone and Haddon 1996, 56). However, such a one-way influence from designers to consumers is not sufficient to explain a domestication process. The consumers

"define their own relationship to the technologies that are offered to, or confront, them"

(ibid., 46) and they have an active role "in taking technologies and objects home, and in making, or not making, them acceptable and familiar" (ibid., 45).

Domestication is often divided into four steps: appropriation, objectification,

incorporation and conversion. By employing these perspectives to domestication, one can better understand why people use technologies the way they do (Haddon 2011, 312- 3). The first step, appropriation, takes an interest in how the object was framed as a desirable thing to have in the home. With this step it should be recalled that desirability

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of an object is not a given (Appadurai 2013). If an object is seen as desirable, it should be examined how collective meaning- making produced this impression. One factor in an object’s desirability is the price. How prices of commodities are understood is never absolute. People need to compare objects to each other and group them conceptually in order to determine that something is expensive because ”it is the goods-with-prices that are tied together cognitively in a value class, thereby making the prices comparable”

(Henning 2000, 225). For example, acquiring a solar technology involves a relatively large down payment as opposed to paying small amounts for fuel or electricity over time. This might make people focus on the short-term cost instead of the prospect of the technology producing energy later for free (ibid. 228). On the other hand, solar

technologies can be perceived to be harvesting free energy (ibid. 225).

However, households are managing their economy also in other than ‘rational

economic’ terms. Sometimes the desirable aspects of the novelty might supersede the uncertainty: Swedish solar water heater owners in the 90s had acquired the technology because they wanted to experiment on whether it would be economically and practically possible to warm water with the energy of the sun (ibid. 215). This is a good example of

‘moral economy’ that is used to describe how “the abstract values associated with money in the formal economy would not need to be” maintained in households and how people strive to uphold their values and related practices to maintain this moral

economy (Silverstone 2005, 236-7). The moral economy is “grounded in a sense of self, and in ideals of appropriate values and behaviour that are equivalently (and by

definition) sustaining identity and culture” (Silverstone 2005, 236). Even though

financial management would have a clear role in appropriation of the object, as it moves to the domestic realm, moral economy would be increasingly important. For instance, Winther and Wilhite’s study on Norwegian heat pump owners found that after the acquisition, the interviewees would not talk about them as investments but would rather emphasize the comfort aspects (2014, 599)

However, even if a product was seen as desirable, its strangeness might hinder appropriation. Designers can adapt the new product and its marketing in order to

address the tension between the familiar and the strange (Silverstone and Haddon 1996, 48-49) but a completely new, strange product might be socially dangerous if people do not view the object as a legitimate acquisition (Shove 2003, 50). If the object is

domesticated and becomes a more ordinary item, one no longer needs to justify the

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purchase (Winther 2007). In time it is possible that the change of social norms creates pressure for all to have the domesticated object (ibid., 8).

Objects enter people’s lives in different ways. Pantzar analyzes how for some

technologies this was driven by individ ual factors (e.g. calculative ‘rationality’), while for others the driver was a collective factor (e.g. fashion; 1997, 55). He distinguishes between hot and cold mental states: while calculative behavior is more ‘cold’ and stable, passions involve “’hot’ internal states” and change more often (ibid.1997, 56).

While a novelty might be used as a ‘toy’ with little practical function, domestication of the technology might lead to the discovery of practical functions and the technology becoming an ‘instrument’ (ibid., 54). Technologies can be redefined during their

lifespans, causing implications on who adopts them and how they are used. In the 1970s Sweden, solar water heaters (SWHs) became a household technology after being

promoted by the environmental movement (Henning 2000, 234-5). At this rather early period of the environmental movement, many Swedes were doubtful about the

seriousness of the technology. By the 1990s, the Swedish society had become more open to taking environmentally friendly action and the technology spread wider than environmentalists – but the history was very present as the SWH owners still felt the need to distance themselves from environmentalists (ibid. 235).

The next step, objectification, deals with the physical aspect of technology adoption.

People’s perception of the object, its function and symbolic value are reflected in the placement of the artefact in the material arrangements of their home (Silverstone 2005, 236). Miller (1992) points out that especially the size of an object creates an analyzable connection between the cultural context and the physical form of an artefact; he divides objects into small portable ones and large, often expensive ones, such as buildings, that are fixed where they first were placed. Henning (2000, 201) illustrates how a solar collector is connected to the material and conceptual structures of people’s homes:

A solar collector is, however, not merely part of a house. It is part of the outside of a house. Unlike an oil-burning furnace, for instance, a solar collector is not put in a cellar, unseen by everyone but the family and closest friends. It is put on the front page, that is, on top of one's roof. It is there for everyone to see and judge.

She found that due to their size of solar collectors and perception of them as non- movable items they were most commonly seen as large artefacts belonging to the

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‘outside’ of the house (ibid., 213). In the Swedish context, this perception and the connection to practical construction skills meant it conceptually belonged to the male sphere of interest and competence (ibid., 222). Henning continues to point out that the apprehension of a feature of a house (such as a SWH) as appropriate or inappropriate is highly culturally dependent and often related to whether the feature is seen to deviate from what is ‘normal’ (ibid., 203). Such cultural norms have a big impact when people restructure the material structure of their houses, for example during renovations. Aune (2007) found three distinct ways the Norwegian interviewees related to their homes.

There were people to whom their home was a haven that enabled relaxation and privacy; for some, home-making was continuous process influenced by individual and family identities; while for others home was a scene for activities and the cultivation of good relationships (ibid. 5460-5462). Discussing Scandinavian and North American contexts, Wilhite and Lutzenhiser point out that "(f)or many people, especially middle- class home owners, the act of home creation is never finis hed" (1999, 282). When people renovated their homes, they are simultaneously breaking the material structures that have had a significant influence on their routines, and creating new structures that will likely impact their routines for a long time in the future. Home renovations can be instances to install new technologies (Christensen et al. 2011, Winther and Wilhite 2014).

After integration of the physical object in the spatial structure of their home, the third step in domestication is when people incorporate it into the temporal patterns of their everyday life. This includes making technology part of their daily routines and schedules (Silverstone 2005, 235). When people incorporate certain aspects but not others, they also ‘do’ different things with the technology (Haddon 2011). Incorporation of ‘luxuries’ without a previous, corresponding technology differs from replacing technologies that enter an established practice because established routines and

practices have a strong impact on people’s behavior (Pantzar 1997). Moreover, whether a technology is seen as an object of desire or as an instrument, affects how people adjust, manipulate and customize the technology in order to incorporate it into their daily lives in a meaningful way (Winther and Bell 2017, Winther, Westskog, and Sæle, in progress). Therefore, solar PV systems seen as a replacement to grid electricity might be given different expectations than a PV system seen as a luxury (or a toy).

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Knowledge is central in informing how the technology will be incorporated and what kind of relationship people develop to the technology. The fact that neither the production of energy nor the product, electricity, is visible or tangible to the owner of the PV system (with the exception of monitors etc.) makes knowledge even more important. People might not be sure about whether the panel is producing as it should, or how much money they should get from the production (Winther, Westskog, and Sæle, unpublished work) The participants in a study by Judson et al. (2015) were rather

unsure whether keeping a heat pump on all the time was costly. They did not understand the controls of the system and apart from a few people that were more engaged with technology, none of them had changed the settings for their preferences (Judson et al.

2015, 40). People relied on their quarterly electricity bill for information on the workings of the technology; they had received no email although the technology was installed months ago (ibid. 41-42). In Wilhite and Winther’s study (2014, 603) leaving the pump on all the time was advised by installers of the technology and most

interviewees followed this recommendation of optimal use. The installers figured as the most influential source of knowledge for the users in terms of how to optimally use the technology (Winther and Wilhite 2014, 603).

The final step, conversion, refers to the symbolic aspect of the technology, and the degree to which people make use of the object to present themselves socially. This was already touched upon in the discussion of how legitimacy of the technology plays a role in appropriating the artefact. The symbolic aspect influences people’s behavior both before and after they have acquired the technology: for example, Henning observed how Swedish solar water heater owners dealt with the general skepticism towards the

technology (2000). They employed ‘face saving' methods – such as installing a cheaper solar water heater or making efforts to bring down the cost by doing some bits on their own – to accentuate the impression of saving money with the investment (ibid., 228-9).

On top of this, some justified the purchase by referring to how much time they saved by using less time heating water (ibid., 228-9). Hence an object with an ambiguous status created a need for legitimizing the purchase by highlighting the economic gains or enhanced convenience (ibid., 232), reflecting how collective meaning-making can affect both appropriation and conversion of the object. Therefore, they used the energy

technology to signal their adherence to the societal values of economic smartness and convenience.

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In Winther, Westskog and Sæle’s study (in progress), signaling identity with the PV technology was important to Norwegian prosumers. Whereas for some people, this was related to an interest in technology or their environmental values, whereas others emphasized the modernity and comfort aspects of having solar panels. Moreover, the majority expressed that having the system brought them pleasure. In addition, people saw that by having such a microgeneration technology, they were benefitting the society and helping with electricity supply to the grid. While this tendency was strong, people did not see that solar panels would have a significant value to them in making them more independent of the electricity grid.

It is important to remember that the material capacity of the technology and meanings given to it are co-emergent (Turner 2016, 103), meaning that the conversion aspect changes as the technology is taken into use in different ways. The steps of

domestication do not need to happen one after another but can occur simultaneously.

Moreover, technologies can be 'tamed' or re-domesticated several times, as people and the technologies themselves change (Haddon 2011, 317). Instead of taking a given technology out of use, people might re-assess their relationship to it: radio, for example, changed its role after television became a common technology (Haddon 2011, 319).

Rather than looking at the domestication process as a linear path, the approach provides the tools to understand how technologies and their users have been defined and

redefined over the course of time (Silverstone and Haddon 1996, 55). If people conclude that the object does not suit their lives or that it would disrupt the balance between different priorities, domestication might never be completed even if people had the technology (Haddon 2011, 320). For example, they could think that the object is not a priority or too expensive (appropriation), unsuited to where they live (objectification), burdensome or otherwise hard to integrate into their daily schedules (incorporation), or symbolically incompatible as it might convey the wrong message to other people (conversion). Especially objects that were not adopted because of any desire for having the object might end up being rejected or dis-domesticated (e.g. electricity displays in Winther and Bell 2015).

Domestication is a suitable theory for studying solar panels because it highlights the multitude of factors and circumstances that affect how and for what reasons the technology is used. It does not see adoption of a new technology as a given but as an

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uncertain terrain where different actors "stumble their way towards the newly possible"

(Silverstone and Haddon 1996, 45). These points illustrate how, in dynamic innovation processes, the meaning attributed to the technology is constantly redefined as

circumstances change, and how this results in starting the domestication process, redefining the object and changing the use of it, or abandoning it altogether.

2.3 Theories of practice

To conceptualize and analyze the way the PV systems are integrated into daily energy consuming routines, this thesis draws on social practice theory. Another way to refer to this is theories of practice, illustrating the fact that instead of being a single theory, the theorizing in question is a cluster of approaches with different terminology and different understandings of concepts (Spaargaren 2011). The concept of practices was formed out of Bourdieau’s concept of habitus that emphasized how repeating certain actions created predispositions for future behavior (1977). Since practices are socially shared behaviors that individuals can participate in, individual members of any given household do not

‘have’ their own practices but participate in shared practices. A common definition for a practice by Warde states that a practice is "a routinized type of behavior which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of

understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge" (2005, 133).

Therefore, they are constituted of individual, sociocultural and material elements (Sahakian and Wilhite 2013, 4). This means that natural resources and formalized procedures such as government regulation are also elements of practice (Westskog, Winther, and Strumse 2011, 255).

Since energy is to a large extent consumed during every day routines, “governed by collective norms and undertaken in a world of things and sociotechnical systems that have stabilizing effects on routines and habits” (Shove 2003, 9), practice is a suitable concept for the analysis of energy consumption. Approaches that emphasize reflexive decision-making in explaining consumer behavior overlook factors that influence

behavior on a subconscious level, such as habits, dispositions, social norms and material circumstances. Explaining the acquisition of domestic appliances mainly with

conspicuous aspects of consumption, such as desire for novelty or the expression of

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identity, would as well overlook the inconspicuous nature of energy consumption (Shove 2003, 11). When performing energy-related household practices, people are not

“consuming” energy; they tend to be more focused on factors such as convenience and comfort, rather than their energy use (e.g. Wilhite 2008, Shove 2003).

The practice theoretical approaches differ on what routine activities they regard as a practice. Shove (2014) calls for practice theoretical research to follow Giddens (1984) by placing practice as the central topic of enquiry. For her, practice theoretical research should not be about how people change but how the constitutive elements of practice – meanings (perception and understanding of the practice), competences (knowledge on

‘how to do’ the practice) and materials (objects and infrastructures) – change across time as the carriers reproduce them in localized instances of performance (Shove 2014, 418-9). She argues that many studies have employed practice theory based terminology to analyze patterns of individual and group behavior, rather than the practice that has a history and a future in the collective of people (Shove and Walker 2014, 47). Similar to Shove – and many other researchers using different kinds of practice theory approaches – the framework adopted in this thesis emphasizes that energy is not used for its own sake. Resource consumption such as electricity use should not be seen as a practice but as “moments of consumption” in practices (Warde 2005, 142). Consumption of a resource is often linked with a multitude of practices: drinking bottled water, for example, can be part of the practices of working out, feeling healthy, commuting to work, or eating out (Sahakian and Wilhite 2013, 12).

Seeing consumption as an engagement in practices creates the need to contextualize the individual consumer (Westskog, Winther, and Strumse 2011, 457). In doing this, it is important to consider social and material structures, however, incongruent behavior can also be an important driver of dynamic processes of cultural change (Henning 2000, 60) and therefore, practice theoretical studies should be aware of not overlooking what is not shared. Many researchers using practice theory emphasize that the individual should not be seen neither fully independent with unrestricted reflexive agency to make

rational decisions and express identity, nor a product of the past and sociomaterial circumstances, unable to choose his or her own actions. Agency can be seen as a continuum with routine behavior at the one end and reflexive, intentional behavior at the other (Ortner 2006). Wilhite (2012, 87) argues that agency is best understood as

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“distributed”. While individuals are capable of being creative and experimental about how they participate in practices, he attributes agency to sociocultural constructs, experiential knowledge, and material objects and infrastructures as well. People accumulate experiential and bodily knowledge by either taking part in practices or through the mediation of culture (Wallenborn and Wilhite 2014, 56) and these dispositions have agency on their future actions (Winther and Wilhite 2014, 596).

Dispositions and social norms can be a strong contributor to why things do not change.

In a study of Japanese and Norwegian comfort practices Wilhite et al. concluded that

"despite the diffusion of hardware, there is still a curious resistance to the extensive use of air conditioners in the dwellings in which they are installed" because of the folk theory of artificially cooled air being bad for the health (1996, 283). Similar resistance was found in Christensen et al. (2011, 1969) as several people did not want to use the cooling function of their heat pump since they felt air conditioning was unnecessary, reflecting the abnormality of A/C in Denmark.

Electricity is an invisible energy carrier that easily slips to the background of people’s consciousness, unless something is wrong. Studies from various disciplines have suggested that making electricity more ‘visible’ through improved feedback would also motivate them to reduce their electricity consumption with electricity monitors, also known as In-Home Displays (IHDs). Applying practice theoretical concepts to studying a topic dominated by studies from psychology and economics has enabled the inclusion of a wider range of driving factors behind energy consumption and has improved our understanding of what happens after such displays are installed. For instance, several studies have found that feedback does not work on its own to reduce electricity

consumption levels, because even if people do engage at first, the screen at some point moves to the background of everyday life, and people pay attention only if there was something wrong (Hargreaves, Nye, and Burgess 2013, Naus et al. 2014).

IHDs are a good example of how practice theory can help frame the role of energy in daily energy-consuming routines. Since people tend not to think about energy

consumption while engaging in practices, feedback on energy should be seen only as a part of a practice that is more salient at some points of time than at others. If energy consumption is not a practice in itself, what about energy production? In studies applying practice theory to PV energy production, energy production seems to be

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considered as a practice. Hansen and Hauge (2017) apply Shove’s elements of practice (competences, materials and images/meanings) on the adoption of residential PV systems. Many of these studies combine practice theory with notions of material agency, notably the concept of a script that was coined in Science and Technology Studies to explain human-technology interaction (Akrich 1992). Scripts are embedded potentials in the artefact, guiding people towards some kinds of behavior while

restricting others (Verbeek 2006, 362; 367). The concept emphasizes the importance of the materiality of objects, as scripts are communicated not only through signs but through the material properties of the object (Verbeek 2006, 374).

Apart from the physical aspect of a script, the ways people relate to the object is

informed by norms and perceptions of how a technology can be used and what it should be used for (Silverstone and Haddon 1996). Such ‘public definitions’ of the use of the technology inform regulatory structures, advertising rhetoric, the instructions and guidelines accompanying the technology, and related daily routines and norms (ibid., 46). Studies on the adoption of energy technologies have shown how scripts (and norms embedded in the scripts) are re-interpreted through social interaction. Discussing heat pumps in Norway, Winther and Wilhite (2014) mention that apart from experiential knowledge (previous participation in practices), and information following the device (manuals etc), people followed the script of the heat pumps as they interpreted it. Being unsure of how to use the heat pump, most people followed the installers’ instructions.

However, the impact of this is conditioned by whether the user understands the information or not. Hansen and Hauge (2017, 1230) found that this had not been the case with Danish prosumers as they had attended a seminar on the tariff structure but had been disappointed to find out how it actually worked. A part of scripting is done intentionally, as designers of products try to influence the ways users engage with the object (Verbeek 2006, 374-45). The material arrangement of thermostat heating, for example, is less engaging than heating that invites the user to manage indoor

temperature, which might lead to dwellers of the house becoming increasingly unaware of the indoor climate (Winther and Wilhite 2014). Shove recognizes this as well, calling out the examination of “[w]hose knowledge and interests are embedded along the way and what difference has this made to the sizing and specification of heating and cooling technologies and the design of the built environment” (2003, 21-22).

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The focus should not be limited to conscious design choices, however, as it leaves out the fact that the object has potential for more uses than the obvious ones. These latent scripts can emerge as users take the artefact to use in new, even surprising ways (Wilhite 2013, 64). This notion has been relevant to studies on the rebound effect, a concept referring to how buying a more efficient device, for example, might not lead to energy savings if increases in the size, number and features of energy technologies exceed the gains in efficiency (Harris et al. 2006). The technology might also be used differently, not leading to expected energy savings: a heat pump, for instance, might be used to heat up larger areas of the home, or be turned on more hours of the day or longer periods of the year, such as was the case with Norwegian heat pump users (Winther and Wilhite 2014, 596). This was consistent with the findings from a study by Christensen et al. (2011, 1973) where due to this far from ‘optimal’ use, the expected monetary savings did not materialize. Since solar PV systems provide electricity that has many more uses than just heating, the potential of rebound impacts is vast.

In analyzing the integration of energy technologies to practices over the course of domestication, practice theory reminds us to pay attention to what energy is ‘for’; they emphasize “the need to consider the changing forms of ‘work’ that material

arrangements, including flows of matter and energy, enable us to do” (Shove and Walker 2014, 55). Remembering that solar electricity is ‘for’ something, one can interpret the type of work that energy is used for as something that is interpreted as necessary for conducting everyday life. The work done with energy also has a systematic side to it. Shove (2003, 3) points out that there are three ‘complexes of practices’, comfort, convenience and cleanliness, which encompass much of everyday energy consumption and therefore are important drivers of more energy-intensive forms of consumption. The upward spiraling of comfort is clearly visible in energy-intensive practices, such as those adjusting indoor temperatures independently of weather conditions outside (Shove 2003, 46). Shove refers to this as “manufactured weather”

and notes that this can promote the creation of a symbolic division between a managed interior and an unpredictable exterior (2003, 26). This can lead to the margin for an acceptable indoor temperature becoming narrower and less correlated with the time of the year (Christensen et al. 2011). Shove and Walker point out that the enactment of practices is dependent on the availability of various energy sources and is realized through artefacts and infrastructures (Shove and Walker 2014). Solar PV systems are

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also to be understood this way as the panels as material elements and energy as a resource become part of the ways daily practices are carried out. They also make an important point in highlighting that just because a given type of energy is salient, it should not be given a special status as a driver of practice changes (ibid., 49). Therefore, this thesis does not assume that energy production in the home caused any changes in practices; it rather draws on practice theory to contextualize the integration of PV systems into daily practice.

The number of studies that have employed practice approaches on understanding the impact of PV technologies on energy-consuming practices is rather low. However, the few studies that have looked at this have found that, especially when driven by a certain policy context, PV technology can lead to temporal reconfigurations of practice. In Norway and the UK, prosumers pay more for the electricity they buy from the grid than the electricity injected to the grid, which has been found to promote self-consumption of the electricity. A study on PV users in the UK by Bulkeley, Powells and Bell found that people used electricity monitors to move electricity use for the hours of excess

production and started seeing this as “the optimal way to manage solar power” (2016, 18). In Winther, Westskog and Sæle’s study (in progress), the clear majority of the participating Norwegian prosumers had rescheduled the time of their consumption according to when their PV system would be producing. In particular, they would use washing machines, dishwashers and tumble driers or charge their electric vehicle during daytime. For many of these households, the natural cycles had become part of the way they reproduced their daily practices, which was something that they were aware of and saw as a positive change. This shift was found also in Hansen and Hauge’s study of Danish prosumers (2017). However, these Danish consumers not only planned their energy use according to sunlight but strove to use all the energy that they produced out of antipathy towards the electricity company (ibid., 1226). These prosumers were part of a new microgeneration scheme which offered less benefits and hence, they did not want to give away their own free energy.

In summary, the approaches differ in terms of what is seen as a practice, what concepts are used, and what role is given to material objects, infrastructures and resources (such as energy). This thesis acknowledges that the group under study is implicated in various meaningful practices which are constituted by materials, competences and meanings

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(Shove 2014, 418-9). People’s previous practices (e.g. heating, cooling, cooking) in urban Querétaro form the ‘context’ in which PVs were introduced, and will therefore be touched upon. Because this is a master’s thesis and its focus is the domestication of the solar PV systems, the study can cover only a limited part of what I consider to be social practices. In other words, it is not the purpose of this study to provide a full analysis of how practices, such as heating, cooking and laundering, are changing but rather to explore the connections of the PV systems to the changes in the most central electricity- consuming practices. Furthermore, it should be noted that I do not consider the

conscious act of “consuming energy” as a central topic that should be focused on, and therefore with “energy-consuming practices” I refer to practices that include moments of energy consumption (cooking, heating, laundering), not to a practice of consuming energy as an entity.

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3 Methods

This chapter will introduce the methods I used in my research, the interviewees and other relevant considerations on how the research was done in practice. The principal material for this study was collected in interviews with thirteen households who have grid-connected solar PV systems. Additionally, I interviewed eleven stakeholders of the solar panel market and/or the electricity provision system. All interviews were

conducted in September-November 2016. The first section will present the chosen method, semi-structured interviews. The following two sections describe the process of recruitment and the profiles of stakeholder and household interviewees, respectively.

The fourth section presents the interview guides and other material collected during the interviews. The fifth section reflects on factors that might have affected my access to information or influenced informants’ answers to my questions, including how the interviewees perceived me and the interviewing situation. The last section will discuss ethical considerations.

3.1 Semi-structured interviewing

I have used semi-structured interviews as my main method since people's own thoughts and experiences are a central element of understanding both technology adoption and energy consumption. The semi-structured approach is particularly suitable method to for getting access to this kind of information because it focuses on people’s perceptions and allows for other topics to be naturally introduced. I used an interview guide to give structure to the interview but this was not followed as rigidly as in structured interviews.

The point was to have flexibility to allow study subjects to provide elaborate answers and to enable me to ask for explanations, clarifications and additional information regarding their responses. This was important since the interviewees are ‘experts’ in their relationship to the PV system and their own electricity consumption and therefore, might bring up topics that I had not thought of. Structured interview methods would not have allowed for this kind of openness for new topics introduced by the interviewees themselves.