Re-assembling infrastructures from below. The agency of households in the sustainable energy transition

High shares of renewable energy generation, digitalisation, and increased electrification are putting energy systems in flux. In this article we examine the ways households actively re-configure energy system relations at the local level and become agents in the ongoing energy transition. Drawing on assemblage theory, we foreground processes of emergence, the multiplicity of current configurations and the assemblage work required to create new infrastructure constellations. Through semi-structured interviews with households in Sweden and on-site visits we explore different situations where ambitions and desires of households, energy system actors and data service providers intersect and create particular logics of change. While assemblage work may result in households temporarily gaining greater agency by pursuing ideas of self-sufficiency, controlling their bills or the convenience of controlling devices, utilities and app providers also try to tap into this assemblage and integrate it towards a different logic of electricity grid governance or the data economy. • An energy system in transition creates new situations for arranging energy-related social and material elements in the home. • Conceptualising these as home-energy-infrastructure assemblages emphasises the distributedness of agency and the assemblage work required to create coherence. • Situations involving own energy generation and steering with digital apps often result in assemblages driven by a logic of independence or cost-savings and reconfigures energy infrastructure relations. • Enrolling households in utility demand management programmes reconfigures the agency of households and creates new tensions. • Transition policy needs to become more sensitive to such emerging configurations and their effects.