Solar Heating: Like Having a Nuclear Power Plant in the Wardrobe? An Analysis of How People Living with an Alternative Energy System Experience this New Technology

Erica Löfström, Linköping University, Department of Technology and Social Change

Keywords

Abstract

This paper deals with a Swedish pilot project where solar collectors are being combined with a new technology that stores the sun’s heat in bedrock to provide wintertime solar heating. With this system, solar energy produces both hot water and space heating. In addition to data collection, it is also important to understand how a heating system technology is used by people in their everyday lives and how users of a new technology understand the technology experienced in order to ensure that it works in practice. This paper presents a view of how the inhabitants of the residential area where this bedrock solar heating system is being used are experiencing this new technology. A modified version of ‘The moral economy of the household’ by Silverstone et. al., is used as an analytical tool in order to understand the domestication of technology, i.e., the new kind of heating system, as a way of structuring the empirical material.

The main result of this study is that high tolerance amongst the residents, concerning function and comfort, can be expected when implementing a new kind of technology if the technology itself is associated with positive connotations, like for example “natural” or “clean” energy. This result is encouraging for the building and planning of future pilot projects with alternative energy systems.