Communicating Energy Flexibility to the Masses!

This month I have been working on many things, including end-of-year reports and presentations, discussing flexibility with academia, industry and policy colleagues, and spending much time at home telling my parents and grandparents what I’m still doing at university. The biggest thing I learned from all of this was how difficult it is to explain complex topics to different people. So I thought an excellent issue for my blog on energy flexibility would be how to communicate complex topics (like energy flexibility) without sounding like a crazy academic!

Understand why the work you are doing is important and how it could benefit the general public, then take them on the journey and explain the benefits and how it works in simple language

Understanding your audience is a crucial skill if we are to get everybody on board with decarbonising the nation. In my family’s case, non of them have been to university, making it a challenge to explain things in ways that make sense. I tend to make many analogies when talking about energy flexibility —for example, using a timer to set the dishwasher to go off at night rather than in the evening. Surprisingly my grandma showed me a cutting from the newspaper which talked about reducing flow temperatures from a boiler to help save money on gas, which is critical to getting the most out of your heat pump!

Several of my colleagues are educated, but how technically minded someone can vary greatly. So often (even in everyday life), you don’t want to use jargon. I often experience this when talking with European academics in the flexibility space who are experts in what they do, but a policymaker wouldn’t really understand what they’re saying. Therefore is critical to use commonly used terms in plain English (without greenwashing!). Especially when explaining concepts like “demand response” or “demand management”.

I also think that the general public is a lot like academic audiences, where you want to pitch ideas that make logical sense whilst appealing to them emotionally too. This is the case when doing presentations or writing reports. In my case, I have to build a solid argument about why what I’m doing is a good way to do things and how it will benefit or result in a “better” outcome.

Finally, when it comes to getting people on board with a new idea, I think taking them on the decision-making journey with you is crucial. Like the Energy System’s Catapult explained when developing energy plans for local authorities, understanding how people would interact with new systems is imperative to their success. That’s why the work being done by the University of Southampton with Igloo Enterprises (LATENT) is so essential, as they look at user acceptability of reducing home temperatures to provide energy flexibility from electrically driven heat sources. This concept is at the heart of my work, too and assumes that swings in temperature of +/- 2 Deg C would be acceptable.

In conclusion, I feel it’s important to understand why your work is important and how it could benefit the general public, then take them on the journey and explain the benefits and how it works in simple language. By taking this approach, I think more people are interested in my work (not just because of the energy crisis) but because I take the time and effort to explain clearly and simply what and how I’m doing what I do.