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

Is Your Fleet Ready for Vehicle-To-Grid?

Via GreenBiz, an article on how – before pursuing the reduced costs and environmental benefits promised by vehicle-to-grid tech – people should make these careful considerations: Fleets of electric vehicles that not only plug into a charger to sip power but also to feed power back to an electric grid or building are mostly a thing […]

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U.S. Virtual Power Plants Expected To Proliferate

Via UtilityDive, a look at how battery storage and smart appliances make virtual power plants an increasingly viable option to address the intermittency of renewable energy: As an increasing supply of renewable energy resources requires greater reliability and resiliency for the power grid, virtual power plants are emerging as one way to ensure the supply […]

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Bi-Directional Charging: Putting Gridlock In Rearview Mirror?

Via The Atlantic, a look at the power grid in an era of growing electricity consumption: Every Texan I know has what you might call “grid anxiety,” a low-humming preoccupation with electricity that emerged after brutal winter storms kneecapped the state’s isolated power grid in February 2021. That frigid disaster triggered highway pileups and runs on grocery […]

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Why Aren’t Texans Paid to help Prevent Blackouts During Heat Waves?

Via Canary Media, commentary on why – as Texas endures another bout of extreme heat – more incentives are not offered to recruit residents to help ease demand on the stressed grid:   In Texas, record-setting heat is causing record-setting electricity demand, as power-hungry air conditioners become essential to daily life. Though wind and solar power are helping to keep […]

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Tesla Alum Aims To Build The Power Company Of The Future

Via Canary Media, a report on Equilibrium Energy which is live in Texas with an offering to rent grid batteries and make money with them in the ERCOT markets: It is a truth universally acknowledged that an electrical grid in possession of rapidly growing renewable capacity must be in want of energy storage. Climatetech entrepreneur Ryan Hanley aims to […]

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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.