A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Archive for June, 2023

Price Signals: You Should Be Getting Paid to Prevent Heat Wave Power Outages

Courtesy of The New York Times, commentary on the potential for financial incentives to manage power demand: A record-setting heat dome is smothering Texas and neighboring states with no sign of letting up any time soon. Heat like this burns bare feet on sidewalks and pool decks, and sears hands on steering wheels. Trees and […]

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Four Non-Transmission Solutions for Clean Energy

Via Utility Dive, a look at four non-transmission solutions for clean energy with new power lines in the permitting ‘Valley of Death’, specifically smart technologies, storage, overbuilding and distributed resources: Despite White House and other efforts, new transmission projects to deliver the growing amounts of clean energy in the U.S. to where it’s most needed face […]

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Virtual Power Plants Are Coming to Save the Grid, Sooner Than You Might Think

Via Inside Climate News, a look at how networks of thousands of home-based batteries could be key to a cleaner, more reliable electricity system: This summer could be the first one in which virtual power plants—networks of small batteries that work in tandem to function like power plants—are large enough to make their presence felt […]

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Railways: Potential To Be A Key ‘Utility Player’ For Backup Power

Via Energy Daily, a report on how railways could be a key ‘utility player’ for backup power: The U.S. electric grid faces simultaneous, evolving pressures. Demand for power from the grid is increasing as people adopt electric cars and building energy is transitioned from gas to electricity. At the same time, climate change is driving […]

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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.