Robustness Tradeoffs under Increasingly Operational Forms of Governance in Decentralized Electricity Systems

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: (Infra)structures

Abstract

Decentralization in electricity systems has shifted households from passive consumers to grid contributors coordinated through automated infrastructures. Historically, household participation occurred within centralized systems characterized by legible institutional governance and clear role allocation. In contemporary systems, operational dependence increasingly rests on household-owned devices coordinated through automated procedures, producing stability under routine operating conditions. These developments are typically evaluated using performance metrics that emphasize real-time reliability and efficiency, yet the underlying shift toward automated, device-mediated coordination reallocates governance functions across infrastructures operating at different temporal scales, reshaping the institutional and social foundations through which coordination is sustained. Drawing on the Coupled Infrastructure Systems framework, this paper interprets these developments as a reallocation of governance functions toward fast operational feedback, with consequences for institutional interpretation and repair. This reallocation produces a robustness tradeoff: it strengthens robustness under routine operational conditions while reducing robustness when disturbances, such as heat waves and wildfires, violate the assumptions underlying coordination and require institutional interpretation and repair to re-couple the system. Durability, in this view, does not follow from stable system performance alone, but from translational capacity: the ability to recognize when those assumptions no longer hold and to translate such breakdowns into governance repair across operational and institutional domains.

Author

• Thomas Familia, Arizona State University