A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Archive for June, 2009

Round 1 Of A Google-Microsoft Energy Monitoring Rivalry?

Courtesy of Green Tech Media, a report on the recent announcement that German utility Yellostrom will work with Google on testing its PowerMeter home energy monitoring software.  What is interesting about this announcement,  Yellostrom – as discussed in the article – is also working with Microsoft, which has its own rival home energy platform, on […]

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Smart Grids: Helping Consumers Get Plugged In

Via The Economist, a comprehensive review of the smart grid initiative and its benefits on innovation. “…AROUND the world billions of dollars are being invested in clean-energy technologies of one sort or another, from solar arrays and wind turbines to electric cars. But there is a problem lurking in the power grid that links them […]

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Water: Smart Meters And Smart Competition Ahead?

Via Aguanomics, a well written blog on the economics of water well worth regular reading, an interesting series of comments on the potential and possible efficacy of “smart” water meters: “…On the electric side, smart grid is all the rage. Utilities are installing smart meters that can tell customers how much energy they are using […]

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Smart Grid Success: A Consumer Technology Play?

While we have long been proponents of connecting smart grids to smart markets to truly engage consumers, Earth2Tech provided an interesting endorsement on the idea that consumers may indeed be the key to successful home energy management.  As the article notes, success may indeed be a consumer technology play vs. a utility play: “…Evidence that […]

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Is The Smart Grid Bubbling Over in Home Energy Management? / Microsoft’s Hohm Sweet Hohm

A flurry of new announcements and interesting articles on the end user aspect of home energy management initiatives.  First, via Earth2Tech, a look at whether there is a bubble forming in the space: From my perspective,, there is one clear area of the smart grid that is seeing too much investment from venture capitalists, specifically […]

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Go Wet, Young Man … IT, Smart Meters, and Wired Water

Via Tech News World, a report on the application of information technology to water & the opportunities therein.  As the article notes: “…The very economic survival of a thirsty, arid Earth — with the U.S. southwest as a prime example — depends a great deal on properly applying the skills and expertise of app developers […]

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About This Blog And Its Authors
Grid Unlocked is powered by two eco-preneurs who analyze and reference articles, reports, and interviews that can help unlock the nascent, complex and expanding linkages between smart meters, smart grids, and above all: smart markets.

Based on decades of experience and interest in conservation, Monty Simus believes that a truly “smart” grid must be a “transactive” grid, unshackled from its current status as a so-called “natural monopoly.”

In short, an unlocked grid must adopt and harness the power of markets to incentivize individual users, linked to each other on a large scale, who change consumptive behavior in creative ways that drive efficiency and bring equity to use of the planet's finite and increasingly scarce resources.