Integrating multidisciplinary perspectives on demand side participation for future systems

Multidisciplinary research on aspects of future power systems can be both challenging and rewarding as demonstrated by three institutions with distinct disciplinary perspectives co-researching demand side participation within the Supergen Networks Consortium. This paper seeks to identify and describe different facets of our combined approach and to provide a template for multidisciplinary working within the context of future electricity networks. Facets of the respective research perspectives are identified including: epistemology, scale, sector and methodology. Whilst it is evident that a unified perspective is not achievable, a ´daisy chain´ of co-research is proposed that unifies technical, economic and social perspectives whilst accommodating differences within each of the facets. The ´daisy chain´ analogy enables overlap as well as distinctiveness to be represented