Industrial consumers’ smart grid adoption: influential factors and participation phases

The participation of industrial consumers in smart grid transition is important due to their consumption footprint, heavy energy use and complexity in the implementation of smart energy technologies. Active involvement of industrial consumers in the development of smart grid solutions is important to ensure the energy system transformation. Despite the importance of industrial consumers has been identified, the empirical studies on the smart grid still mainly address residential and commercial consumers. Therefore, based on four case studies with two industrial consumers, one energy consulting company and one electricity retailer, this paper investigates the factors that influence industrial consumers’ acceptance of smart grid solutions, and how the influential factors are relevant to the smart grid adoption phases. Eleven influential factors are identified that impact on four stages for industrial consumers’ adoption of smart grid solutions (inscription, translation, framing, and stabilization stages). The eleven influential factors are: awareness of multiple contexts, shared support, return-of-investment, ease of use, flexibility and dynamic pricing, liberalization and energy tariff structure, customer focus, solution integration, process improvement, service quality, and company’s green image.