A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Wall Street and Water Futures: Nothing To Fear

Via The Conversation, commentary on why Wall Street investors’ trading California water futures is nothing to fear – and unlikely to work anyway: Water is one of the world’s most vital resources. So is there reason to freak out now that profit-hungry hedge funds and other investors can trade it like a barrel of oil or […]

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Tata Power-DDL Rolls Out Peer-to-Peer Solar Energy Trading In Delhi

Courtesy of Power Ledger, a press release on Tata Power-DDL recent trial roll out of live peer-to-peer (P2P) solar energy trading: Highlights The project will bolster India’s rapid adoption of renewable energy; powered by Power Ledger and India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF). Power Ledger’s blockchain-enabled technology facilitates peer-to-peer (P2P) trading of solar power from over 2MW […]

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Water Markets: Not Perfect But Vital To Murray-Darling Basin’s Future

Via The Conversation, an article on use of water markets in the Murray-Darling Basin: Water markets have come in for some bad press lately, fuelled in part by the severe drought of 2019 and resulting high water prices. They have also been the subject of an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry, whose interim report released last year documented a […]

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An Expanding Pool of Liquidity In Water Market

Via The Economist, an article on how investors are starting to pay attention to water risk: From a small office in Montreal an artificial-intelligence business, Aquantix, plays sleuth for faraway investors worried about water risk. Its model combines high-resolution satellite imagery, weather-station data and regulatory documents scraped from the internet. It estimates not only how […]

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How the UN and Dr Evil Get Water Investment Wrong

Via Global Water Intelligence, interesting commentary on the role of markets and private investors in water: Every year in the January issue of GWI we do a survey of the growth of specialist water investment funds. We are expecting another big leap in assets under management in this year’s survey, which will be published later […]

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Time For Utilities To Embrace Decentralization

Via IWA’s Source Magazine, an article on how decentralized infrastructure can contribute to resilience: Applications for decentralised, or distributed, water and wastewater systems span a great deal of the managed water cycle, from capturing rainwater and stormwater through to wastewater treatment. Such approaches are gaining added impetus because of their potential as a response 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.