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Governance, Innovation & Change
Readiness
Readiness describes the degree to which a technology, institution, organisation, or socio-technical configuration is prepared for broad application in a given context. In smart grid transitions, readiness rarely reduces to a single dimension: a technically mature battery storage system depends equally on market rules that value flexibility, grid codes that define connection requirements, and operational practices that integrate it into dispatch.
Readiness in smart grid transitions is multidimensional — technical maturity alone does not determine whether a solution can be deployed, scaled, or integrated.
Why this matters
Readiness assessment helps decision-makers evaluate whether a technology, solution, or broader approach is prepared for deployment, scaling, or systemic integration. While Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) track engineering maturity, smart grid transitions expose the deployment gap — where components are technically ready but institutional or societal conditions are underdeveloped.1)
Readiness is not a single value but a set of actor-specific tests. It involves moving from an emphasis on the supply-side — does the technology work? — to one that gives equal weight to the user-side and system-wide perspective: is it workable in this context?
To identify bottlenecks, readiness assessments must address three fundamental questions before deployment: Will it work, covering technology, institutional, and organisational readiness? Will anyone want it, covering societal, demand, and market readiness? Will it contribute to long-term societal goals, the domain of transformative readiness?2)
Shared definitions
Readiness describes the degree to which a configuration is prepared for application across specific frameworks. These frameworks are orthogonal rather than sequential — a high score in one does not presuppose readiness in another.3)
Table 1. Readiness frameworks, their core questions, and purposes.
| Framework | Core question | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Technology (TRL) | How mature is the engineering? | Tracking component maturation from lab to market; supply-side focus. |
| Institutional (IR) | Are the rules in place? | Assessing the regulatory, organisational, and market workability. |
| Societal (SRL) | Will society accept it? | Driving innovation by societal needs, values, and inclusive processes. |
| System (SyR) | Is infrastructure ready? | Assessing grid standards, data architecture, and interoperability. |
| Organisational (ORL) | Can the entity adopt it? | Evaluating professional roles, skills, and internal governance. |
| Scaling | Can it grow beyond pilots? | Monitoring the implementation process and adaptive management. |
Table 2. Key terms in readiness analysis.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Deployment gap | The difference between technical maturity (TRL) and readiness for deployment, arising when institutional or societal dimensions lag. |
| Institutional workability | The capacity of a technology to function within specific socio-technical infrastructures, including laws, routines, and actor networks. |
| Regulatory sandbox | A time-limited mechanism allowing innovations to operate under modified rules to generate evidence for both technical and regulatory compatibility. |
| Bankability | A state where a technology has demonstrated sufficient commercial readiness to be considered low-risk for standard commercial financing. |
| Socio-technical assemblage | The combination of hardware, rules, user practices, and infrastructures that must co-evolve for a transition to succeed. |
Figure 1. Scaling readiness: action-oriented support for multi-stakeholder processes.
Source: Sartas et al. (2020).4)
Perspectives
Readiness operates as an alignment process between engineering maturation and the evolution of the socio-technical environment.
Actors and stakeholders
Actors differ in which dimensions of readiness constrain their decisions. For research funders, societal readiness is a tool to ensure research and innovation output avoids failure by building inclusive coalitions and understanding potential sources of opposition.5)
Figure 2. The Societal Readiness Thinking Tool: a resource for maturing research and innovation projects.
Source: Bernstein et al. (2022).6)
EU – Horizon Europe Cluster 5
Piloting the integration of societal readiness assessment into research programmes. Consortia are required to consider values and expectations to increase trust and reduce societal opposition to technological solutions.7)
Technologies and infrastructure
While TRL provides a structured path for hardware, it assumes context is a fixed state. Organisational readiness (ORL) complements TRL by evaluating whether an organisation can sustain the introduction of a specific innovation over time.8)
Figure 3. Organisational Readiness Level (ORL) as a technology-neutral maturity model.
Source: Bruno et al. (2020).9)
Australia – ARENA Commercial Readiness Index
ARENA uses the Commercial Readiness Index (CRI) to evaluate when a technology transitions from being technically feasible to becoming a bankable asset class capable of obtaining commercial financing. While TRL ends at demonstration, the CRI extends to full commercial bankability.10)
Figure 4. Linking TRL and CRI: the journey from research to commercial bankability.
Source: ARENA (2014).11)
Institutional structures
Institutional readiness involves marshalling trans-organisational participation to prepare diverse actors. IR/TRL alignment is critical at risk gates: if a technology is technically mature but has low institutional readiness — for example, missing grid codes — its practical utility remains zero.12)
Figure 5. IR/TRL alignment: asking workability questions at developmental gates.
Source: Webster & Gardner (2019).13)
Austria – Energie.Frei.Raum
A regulatory sandbox framework designed to bridge the gap between technology and institutional readiness. It allows for testing tariff models and market rules under controlled experimental conditions before permanent legislation.14)
Distinctions and overlaps
Supply-side vs. user-side readiness
TRL is fundamentally a supply-side, technology-push tool concerned with signing off engineering risks. Institutional and societal readiness provide the user-side perspective, focusing on workability, valuation, and the societal infrastructure required for adoption.
Level-based vs. stage-gate assessment
Some frameworks (TRL, SRL) use discrete numbers (1–9) to imply a linear progression. Others use stage-gate or orthogonal categories to reflect that readiness dimensions interact recursively rather than sequentially.