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

Smart Meters Without Smart Markets: Dumb Idea

As adroitly noted by The Energy Collective, Forbes has an article on smart meters, reporting that utilities – not consumers – are benefiting from these initiatives.  As the article notes: “…Power companies across the U.S. have installed millions of home smart meters, devices that promise to intelligently cut power use, trim electric bills and ultimately […]

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Smart Grids: Will They Enable Smart Customers and Smart Markets Like iPhone Applications Did For Wireless Telephony?

Courtesy of Earth2Tech, an interesting comparison between the telecommunications industry and utilities as they consider adding value-added services on top of the power network (like phone companies have rushed to do on their data networks) or if remaining content to provide the basic energy pipes.  As part of our advocacy of smart markets and smart […]

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Smart Grids, Smart Customers, and End Use Pricing

Courtesy of Smart Grid News, an interesting article on whether smart grids need smart consumers, and – specifically – whether smart customers will need end-use pricing (they will).  As FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller recently explained “…the “majority of the benefits of the Smart Grid [will be] at the retail level, when consumers have dynamic pricing.”  […]

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Wiser Wires Will Prevail… Now How To Get Wiser Heads Involved?

Courtesy of The Economist, an interesting analysis of the global movement to introduce smart grids.  As the report notes, there is a substantial consumer element still to resolve: “…whereas cars, computers and so forth have become ever more sophisticated, power grids have remained, in essence, sets of dumb wires. Thomas Edison, a pioneer of electrification […]

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Google(T)ed: Recognizing The Potential To Power Up Smart Consumers

There has been lots of recent press regarding Google’s announcement of its partnership with Energy Inc. to bring out the first official device to work with the Power Meter, the TED 5000.  From our perspective, two of the wisest comments on what this initiative means for the smart grid revolve around its impact on consumers […]

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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.