The perks and downsides of being a digital prosumer: optimistic and pessimistic approaches to digital prosumption

The recent evolution of users’ position and agency in digital environments absorbs the attention of several scholars in different fields of study. Users’ new ontological status as prosumers, simultaneously producers and consumers, and their role regarding productive paradigms has raised a lot of contrasting opinions. Different discursive techniques are employed to investigate production practices in digital worlds and are often crafted with the conventions of utopian and anti-utopian approaches. Nevertheless, the adoption of optimistic or pessimistic analytical and rhetorical strategies appears to be prejudiced towards the study of emerging online practices. In reality, the analysis of positive and negative approaches to productive paradigms in digital environments results in the detection of their limitations in reaching a comprehensive understanding of the investigated phenomena. Therefore, the adoption of a more neutral perspective is suggested, one that could potentially foster a holistic approach and therefore a broader and deeper comprehension of the analyzed phenomena

An innovative approach to manage prosumers in smart grid

Smart Grid (SG) achieves bidirectional energy and information flow between the energy user and the utility grid, allowing energy users not only to consume energy, but also to generate the energy and share with the utility grid or with other energy consumers. This type of energy user is called the "prosumer". The sustainability of the SG energy sharing process depends on its participating prosumers. Hence the prosumer management schemes are crucial within the energy sharing field. However, the existing literature on SG energy sharing has shown little attention on prosumer participation and management. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First we critically analyze the prosumer management schemes used by existing approaches and identify the open research issues. Second, we introduce a novel concept to manage the prosumers in the form of goal oriented virtual prosumer-communities and we discuss the aspects of prosumer-community formation, growth and overall management. The main significance of this approach is that the prosumer-communities facilitate the prosumers with similar interest to join together and increase the quantity of energy to be auctioned to the SG and accordingly increase the bargaining power in the energy market. In addition, the prosumer communities can attain more sustainable energy sharing process in long-term

Electricity market design for the prosumer era

Prosumers are agents that both consume and produce energy. With the growth in small and medium-sized agents using solar photovoltaic panels, smart meters, vehicle-to-grid electric automobiles, home batteries and other ‘smart’ devices, prosuming offers the potential for consumers and vehicle owners to re-evaluate their energy practices. As the number of prosumers increases, the electric utility sector of today is likely to undergo significant changes over the coming decades, offering possibilities for greening of the system, but also bringing many unknowns and risks that need to be identified and managed. To develop strategies for the future, policymakers and planners need knowledge of how prosumers could be integrated effectively and efficiently into competitive electricity markets. Here we identify and discuss three promising potential prosumer markets related to prosumer grid integration, peer-to-peer models and prosumer community groups. We also caution against optimism by laying out a series of caveats and complexities

Local flexibility market design for aggregators providing multiple flexibility services at distribution network level

This paper presents a general description of local flexibility markets as a market-based management mechanism for aggregators. The high penetration of distributed energy resources introduces new flexibility services like prosumer or community self-balancing, congestion management and time-of-use optimization. This work is focused on the flexibility framework to enable multiple participants to compete for selling or buying flexibility. In this framework, the aggregator acts as a local market operator and supervises flexibility transactions of the local energy community. Local market participation is voluntary. Potential flexibility stakeholders are the distribution system operator, the balance responsible party and end-users themselves. Flexibility is sold by means of loads, generators, storage units and electric vehicles. Finally, this paper presents needed interactions between all local market stakeholders, the corresponding inputs and outputs of local market operation algorithms from participants and a case study to highlight the application of the local flexibility market in three scenarios. The local market framework could postpone grid upgrades, reduce energy costs and increase distribution grids’ hosting capacity.Postprint (published version

Co-creation and user innovation: The role of online 3D printing platforms

The aim of this article is to investigate the changes brought about by online 3D printing platforms in co-creation and user innovation. As doing so requires a thorough understanding of the level of user involvement in productive processes and a clear view of the nature of co-creative processes, this article provides a ‘prosumption’ framework and a typology of co-creation activities. Then, based on case studies of 22 online 3D printing platforms, a service-based taxonomy of these platforms is constructed. The taxonomy and typology are then matched to investigate the role played by online 3D platforms in regard to the various types of co-creation activities and, consequently, how this impacts user innovation

Hourly Simulation of Energy Community with Photovoltaic Generator and Electric Vehicle

Europe has set the ambitious goal to become the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050. Therefore, it has undertaken several initiatives to promote the energy transition, including the active participation of citizens in the energy sector. In this context, recent European directives introduced the concept of energy community, whose members can consume, share, and store energy locally produced. This work proposes an energy and economic simulation of a renewable energy community powered by a 19.2 kWp photovoltaic system in the province of Cuneo, in Piedmont (Italy). The community consists of a prosumer, which owns the photovoltaic system and a charging station for electric vehicles, and other 17 energy users. Suitable indicators to assess the energy performance of the community (self-consumption and self-sufficiency) were evaluated starting from the estimated production and consumption power profiles. Then, an economic simulation was carried out to assess the economic return on the investment for the member who bore the initial costs and the annual economic savings for the others

Pics or it didn't happen: Instagram in Prosumer Capitalism and Reflexive Modernity

Drawing on practice centered approaches to consumption, this study situates a cultural analysis of Instagram, a smartphone-­‐based image sharing application used by over 80 million people worldwide, within wider discourses on reflexive modernity, critical media studies, prosumption, and late-­‐modern consumer culture. A seven-­‐day diary study with 25 international participants, supplemented by participant observation, helps tie these theoretical engagements to specific lived experiences illustrating what it means to live with a networked camera almost permanently on-­‐hand to record and share images of daily life. I focus on the reflexive framing and composition of moments of consumption within practice, arguing that the material culture and affordances of networked mobile imaging, as represented by Instagram, reflect a divergence in photographic practice that expands the realm of the photographable. As the ‘mobile web’ extends networked communication into new spatial contexts, the already overstated dichotomy between the real and the virtual breaks down. This expansion of imaging and communication into new spaces and routines occurs in conjunction with the twin shifts toward an “experience” and “informational” economy, within a social media ecology that enables, and demands, ever more sharing of experiences. While imaging is experienced by many simply as an enjoyable way to fill time or be creative, I explore the multiple agencies that structure enjoyment and explicate the workings of imaginative pleasure using an adapted reading of Colin Campbell’s account of modern hedonism, coupled with Jodi Dean’s account of drive, or the pleasure that emerges from the failure to achieve satisfaction, and its role in prosumer capitalism. I conclude by arguing that social media platforms like Instagram, and its new parent, Facebook, challenge reflexive modernity theorists’ views of empowered, individuated modern subjectivity. Social media slide readily into the institutional gap, as hidden quasi-­‐ institutions, constituting powerful limits to reflexivity through new disciplining mechanisms, even as they afford the potential for radically transformative reflexivity