A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Archive for January, 2011

Phone, Internet, TV, Gas, Water, and Power: You-tilities Of The Future?

Via Greentech Media, an interesting discussion of the utilities of the future and what combination of technologies and responsibilities, business models and regulatory requirements will keep the lights on.  As the article notes: “…Phone, internet, TV…and gas? In Australia and a few other locations, some communications carriers have begun to experiment with bundling utility services […]

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Smart Grids: Not About Consumer Empowerment, But Rather Encouraging Better Choices

Courtesy of The Energy Collective, an interesting article on the smart grid, in particular the efforts to empower consumers, enabling and motivating them to exercise more control over their use of electricity.  The author makes some wise points about simplicity vs. complexity, and the need to motivate folks to see electricity as anything but a […]

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Tradable Energy Quotas – A Potential Electrical “Currency” For A True Smart Grid?

Via Green Bang, an interesting article on a British Parliamentary report on tradable energy quotas, a data construct that reward efficiency and build climate change resilience that – at some time – may underpin a true “smart market” for electricity. “…Here’s another bit of data that might need tracking in a changing energy market: tradable […]

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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 and Jamie Workman believe 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.