A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
What Makes Transmission So Difficult (and Vital)?

Via Clean Energy Finance Forum, a report on what makes for fights, innovation, and progress in the work of carrying clean electricity across the continent: For all the calls to increase solar and wind generation, do people know the importance of transmission in our ability to actually use it? The climate-driven need to make power from […]

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Car Dealerships: Prime Candidates For Microgrids

Via Microgrid Knowledge, a look at how – as electrification grows – car dealerships become prime candidates for microgrids: US car dealerships are finding they need to upgrade their electrical infrastructure — and fast — given that more than half of their sales are expected to come from electric vehicles (EVs) before the decade is […]

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Building a Power Grid to Span the World

Via the Wall Street Journal, an interesting look at the potential of transnational super grids—the vision of globe-girdling power networks that could ship electricity, particularly renewable energy, from areas where it can be produced in abundance to wherever it is needed—across continents, weather systems and oceans A line to share solar power between the deserts […]

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Can EVs Power The Grid?

Via 3bl Media, a look at whether EVs can power the grid: By 2030, up to half of new electric vehicles could be capable of charging their batteries while they’re plugged in and discharging electricity stored in their batteries back onto the power grid. This “bidirectional” capability opens up the possibility that EV owners could […]

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Water As an Asset Class Is Here

Via Project Syndicate,  commentary on how the technology and infrastructure for creating an integrated global market in water and water rights is advancing quickly, with promising new ventures entering the market: Just over a decade ago, I predicted the arrival of water as an asset class. I foresaw “a massive expansion of investment in the water sector, including […]

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Elon Musk Is Officially in the Texas Electricity Business

Via Gizmodo, an article on Elon Musk’s new venture: selling electricity in the Lone Star State: Noted tax-lover Elon Musk is the latest entrant in Texas’ Wild West energy market. The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is now officially licensed to sell electricity to retail customers in the state through a company called Tesla Energy Ventures. Musk filed […]

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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.