Data isn't enough: Why ELEXIA pairs engineers with anthropologists

ELEXIA is developing next-generation tools for planning and operating local energy systems. Through life-cycle assessment, interoperability and cybersecurity, the project aims to support smarter and more secure energy infrastructures in European cities, industrial parks and energy communities. Durham University leads the work on the social, environmental and economic sustainability aspects of the project – but this is not a purely social-scientific contribution. It is the interplay between two academic traditions that makes Durham's role in ELEXIA distinctive.

The team even found an unlikely case study close to home: Cragside, the world's first smart house, built 170 years before ELEXIA's engineers and anthropologists set out to design the next generation of smart energy systems.

Tony Roskilly represents the technical side. He is Director of Durham Energy Institute, Chair of Energy Systems, and one of the originators of the ELEXIA idea itself, together with Peter Breuhaus at NORCE. With more than 30 years experience in the design, control and operational optimisation of energy systems, Roskilly plays a leading role in the green transition across the UK and Europe, including as head of the UK's hydrogen-fuelled transport network.

Simone Abram, Professor of Anthropology, leads the social-scientific strand of the project. Together with Janie Ling Chin, who is work package leader for sustainability and policy research, she ensures that the technical solutions being developed are actually tested against – and shaped by – the people who will use them.

– I think Durham is quite unique in the way we integrate the engineering and science way of doing things with social science, says Roskilly.

He describes a university large enough to have breadth, yet small enough that people across disciplines actually talk to one another – anthropology, the business school, earth sciences, geography, chemistry and engineering all working together on shared projects.

– Without such a supportive and diverse environment, we couldn't really achieve what we're aiming to do, says Abram.

One of the most concrete points to come out of the Durham team concerns how you actually get hold of the data needed to build good energy systems. Abram highlights something that is easily overlooked in technical projects: gathering data is not only a technical exercise, it is also a relational one.

– Data is not just a set of numbers. Data also has a material form, says Abram. To gain access to the data you need, you need infrastructure and equipment in place – and you don't get that without a relationship with the people who own or use the sites where that equipment has to be installed.

The point is simple but important for both industry and policymakers: if energy systems are to be designed for the users of the future, those users and their interests need to be part of the project from the outset – not bolted on as an "acceptance" problem once the technology has already been developed.

– The whole point of having an energy system that works better is to make sure people have the energy they need, when they need it. Our role in the project is to make sure those users are genuinely part of the system – that they understand it, and that it is designed for them, says Abram.

Ling Chin works closely with all project partners to quantify the environmental and societal impact of the energy systems being developed.

– I find ELEXIA a very interesting project because we bring together stakeholders with different backgrounds and disciplines. Everyone has their own needs and operational profiles. We share our views, extend our knowledge, and work together to improve the efficiency of our systems, she says.

When the whole ELEXIA team met in Durham, the visit also took in Cragside – the house built in the 1850s by the industrialist William Armstrong, widely regarded as the world's first smart house. The house was lit using hydroelectric power long before electricity was commonplace, and the estate still bears traces of the technology of its day: a sawmill, early versions of a dishwasher and a lift, and the Burnfoot Power House generator.

The symbolism is no coincidence: where Armstrong solved the energy challenges of his era with new technology suited to the needs of his time, the ELEXIA team is grappling with the same fundamental question 170 years on – only at a far greater scale, and for a system that has to work for a much larger and more diverse range of users.

Roskilly is clear that ELEXIA's ambitions can only be met through interdisciplinary work.

– We'd like to think we've made a contribution – small steps along the way towards decarbonising our energy system. But that can only really be done by looking at it holistically. We have to bring people from completely different disciplines together to come up with new solutions, not the same incremental ones, but genuinely new ones. That's what ELEXIA has been about, he says.

He also stresses the importance of disseminating the project's findings more widely and testing them against real-world case studies and scenarios, so the research has an impact beyond the project itself.