Non-hierarchic Polycentric Regimes Facilitating Intelligent Distributed Energy Systems: The Common-Pool-Resource Nature of Renewables

State-of-the art social acceptance (SA) of energy innovation research shows that the original definition of social acceptance must be tightened up. This contribution will do so, based on: (1) The coverage of multiple levels, and institutional frameworks as the major factors of SA; (2) Focusing on crucial characteristics of the renewables’ innovations, e.g. distributed energy systems (DES), as the major elements of the object of SA. Beside distributed generation (DG), DES also includes distributed storage, systems of internal demand response (DR), and adjacent infrastructures connecting and regulating the DES. This not simply implementing new hardware, the crux is that DES is based on entirely different organizational principles than the existing centralist and hierarchical system of electricity supply.