A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Making Energy Programmable

Via Matt Mandel, commentary on the potential to make energy programmable: We’ve previously written about the storage gap. The proliferation of solar has led to an abundance of energy when the sun is out and a dearth when it’s not. Batteries help address this gap by storing excess energy in times of plenty and discharging stored […]

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How Virtual Power Plants Are Shaping Tomorrow’s Energy System

Via MIT Technology Review, a look at how – by orchestrating EVs, batteries, and smart home devices – virtual power plants can help make the grid cleaner and more efficient: For more than a century, the prevalent image of power plants has been characterized by towering smokestacks, endless coal trains, and loud spinning turbines. But the […]

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One Easy Way to Boost the Grid: Upgrade the Power Lines

Via Volts, a very informative podcast featuring a conversation with Jason Huang of TS Conductor and Emilia Chojkiewicz of UC Berkeley around the potential of upgrading the power lines: Upgrading power lines — “reconductoring,” in the biz — is a straightforward way to boost the capacity of the electrical grid by enabling it to transmit more […]

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Four Ways AI is Making the Power Grid Faster and More Resilient

Via MIT Technology Review, a look at how – from predicting EV charge times to pinpointing areas of high wildfire risk – AI is transforming our energy network: The power grid is growing increasingly complex as more renewable energy sources come online. Where once a small number of large power plants supplied most homes at […]

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Unlocking The Grid is Key to Meeting Global Renewable Goal

Via Cipher, commentary on the importance of unlocking the grid in order to allow renewable energy’s full potential: Tripling global renewable energy capacity by decade’s end is possible if all the wind and solar capacity currently languishing in regulatory limbo is hooked up to the power grid, a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report shows. The […]

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Secret To A Renewable Grid Lies In Transcontinental Electricity Trading

Via Anthropocene, a look at how renewable energy can be 100% reliable and economically feasible through transcontinental power pools—no long-term storage required: Sources of renewable energy such as solar and wind power are highly variable, not only over time (the sun doesn’t shine at night) but also in space (some places are just windier than others). […]

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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.