A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Time to Let the Free Market Work for Water?

Via The Wall Street Journal, commentary on the power of markets to help manage our growing water scarcity issue: In the U.S., yields from four major crops will drop by as much as 40% on average by the end of the century due to a warming climate, according to a recent study in the journal Science. And […]

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Money For Water

Via Aspen Journalism, a report on a new market mechanism aimed at saving water, namely a $15 million fund to compensate people throughout the Colorado River basin for using less water: When Freddie Botur, 45, whose ranch spans 72,000 acres outside of Pinedale, Wyoming, first heard about a program that was paying ranchers to let water […]

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Dutch Utility Bets Its Future on an Unusual Strategy: Selling Less Power

Via The New York Times, a look at a Dutch utility betting its future on selling less power: When Eneco, a major Dutch utility, tested a promising energy monitor in several dozen homes, things could not have gone much worse. The company making the devices failed to deliver enough of them, and some of those provided […]

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Innovation At Grid’s Edge: How Electricity Will Be Priced In The Future

Via Energy Post, an interesting look at how the rapid transformation of the electricity sector will make it necessary for utilities to adopt radically new pricing methods, specifically envisioning a scenario in which existing volumetric tariffs will increasingly be replaced by fixed service fees: By now the narrative on the rapid transformation of the electricity […]

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Turning Homes Into Virtual Power Plants Driven by Economics And Environmental Goals

Courtesy of the New York Times, an interesting look at how Vermont’s Green Mountain Power is trying to turn homes, neighborhoods and towns into virtual power plants, driven by economics as well as environmental goals: In a new low-income development that replaced a trailer park here, rooftop solar panels sparkle in the sun while backup […]

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Are Smart Meters Already Obsolete?

Via Energy Post, interesting commentary by Freerk Bisschop, Director Smart Energy at Rockstart, and Evert Jaap Lugt, Managing Director at Yes!Delft on some of the trends going on in energy innovation: “What we look for in startups is an innovative concept and a good team with complementary skills. In fact, we’d rather have a good […]

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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.