A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Archive for April, 2011

Why Won’t Social Networking Friend Energy Conservation?

We’ve talked many times about giving the smart grid and smart meters a consumer focused raison d’etre – namely, smart markets – but here are two interesting articles about the limitations of pure social networking / peer pressure to motivate changing behaviors.  As one article adroitly notes: “…we haven’t found the sweet spot for creating […]

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The Smart Grid For Water

Courtesy of Water Efficiency, an interesting article on the power, potential, and challenges of the data inherent in a smart grid for water: “…Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute recently wrote that due to limitations on water supply and the high costs of developing alternative supplies, maximizing the efficiency of water use is paramount […]

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The Age Of Energy Democracy: The Smart Grid Is The Next Internet

Via The Energy Collective, a look at how today’s utility grid is our next personal computer, and Smart Grid may be the next Internet: “Getting horizontal implies that today, something is vertical. So, what exactly does it mean to be vertical? Simply put, a “vertical” is the mechanism by which we focus segments of our […]

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The Next Gen Utility: Selling Services Instead of Power or Water?

Via GigaOm, an interesting article on the impact on solar panels, wind turbines, etc. on utilities’ traditional business model.  As the report notes: Will your local utility one day go the way of dinosaurs? Well, as more home and business owners install solar panels, wind turbines and other electricity and heat generating equipment, the roles […]

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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.