A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Archive for July, 2014

The Great Electric Company Growth Opportunity

Courtesy of the Electric Collective, an interesting commentary on what they call the Great Electric Company Growth opportunity: Energy use in the US can be split into two large (very, very large) pies. One is electricity for use in homes, buildings, and industry, and the other is transportation, which is powered primarily by liquid fuels […]

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Third-Party Financing Was Solar’s Catalyst. Can Energy Efficiency Find the Same Model?

Via Greentech Media, an interesting look at some of new third-party financing models that are emerging for efficiency: Energy efficiency professionals are increasingly looking to the success of third-party financing in the solar industry as a model for attracting large investors and growing deal flow quickly. Is it working? If a new survey of hundreds […]

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Opower: Soon Entering The Community Solar Business?

Via Greentech media, an article on Opower’s plans to help utilities use data from their customers to sell services back to them, perhaps by helping  utilities sell shares in community solar programs and run the billing process.  While the possibility of power companies offering customers an equity stake in solar projects while potentially avoiding net […]

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Evolving Water Markets

Two articles looking more carefully at water rights trading and their potential role in helping address resource shortages.  Thus, not a smart grid solution per se, but a further endorsement of the role that smart markets and trading can play as a means of helping alleviate resource shortages.  The first via the New York Times: […]

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The Changing Architecture Of Electricity: Developing Smart Grids

Courtesy of STRATFOR (subscription required), an interesting look at the architecture of electricity: The basic architecture of distributing electricity to end consumers has changed little during the past 100 years. Still, technologies have slowly evolved over time, and in the last decade the concept of a smart grid has emerged. While there are different definitions […]

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Energy Efficiency Finance Gains Traction

Via Yale’s Center for Business and the Environment, interesting commentary on energy efficiency finance, one aspect of a truly smart grid: The question of whether energy efficiency finance has finally arrived in scale was a major point of discussion at the 2014 ACEEE Energy Efficiency Finance Forum on May 11-13 in Washington, DC. Both the […]

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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.