Domestic photovoltaic systems: the governance of occupant use

Housing is responsible for 29% of all CO2 emissions in the UK, yet there is still limited understanding of why housing routinely uses more energy than predicted, resulting in a performance gap. Recent studies attribute this gap to insufficient use of energy-efficient technologies by occupants. This paper focuses on the governance of domestic photovoltaic (PV) systems in the UK during the provision stage, an overlooked area in the previous energy-efficiency studies that have mainly focused on PV adoption and practices by occupants, but only after installation. The notion of translation in Actor Network Theory (ANT) is used to analyse how a network of PV provision actants decides the system design and integration into homes, and how this in turn conditions household participation in this network. Semi-structured interviews and video tours used in four participative community and two non-participative community case studies reveal the impact of non-human actants in terms of how PV scripts and practices are formed by PV professionals. The findings also shows that the nominated ‘procurement occupants’ were the key mediators in the participative projects, while the housing developers were the key mediators in the non participative projects.