Organisational and Technological Innovations in the Market for Battery Storage Systems

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hans-Martin Zademach
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 432274419

Next to a further deployment of renewable energy resources, energy efficiency and improved capacities of energy storage play a key yet often under-recognised role in the German Energiewende, i.e. the transition by Germany to an environmentally sound low carbon energy supply. In fact, the market for residential battery storage systems displays dynamic growth at present, characterized by numerous entries of new producers and massive rises in sales. Apart from rapid technological advances, also the organization of the market becomes fundamentally changed. One important innovation in this arena of change is the employment of so-called energy communities that result from the opportunity to interlink large numbers of small, regularly privately-owned wind and solar power plants combined with energy storages by means of digital technology. Thus, the members of these platforms are enabled to share their self-produced energy among other peers independently of conventional energy providers. In this context, the project intends to elucidate the interplay and success factors of the (collaborative) development of technological and organizational innovations in order to improve our knowledge on the co-evolution of varying forms of innovation in general and the development and diffusion of sustainability transitions in particular. A mixed methods research design based on both quantitative and qualitative techniques of data collection and interpretation - most notably social network analysis and problem-centered interviews, along with participant observation during fairs and in cross-company workshops - will provide in-depth insights on the practices of (non)cooperation and flows of technical, organization-al and regulatory knowledge across a variety of entrepreneurial (including financial investors) and political actors in innovation processes at the micro level. By dint of the explicit incorporation of political institutions and (conflicts of) interest(s), and the particular focus on financial relations the project ad-dresses well-documented research gaps in the fields of evolutionary economic geography and transition studies. Thus, it bears not only great potential to further enforce the Energiewende in practical, i.e. corporate and policy terms, but also for greater conceptual advancements in the geographies of innovation and sustainability transitions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants