A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Smart Grid to Grow 21 Percent a Year to $17B by 2014

Courtesy of Earth2Tech, interesting analysis of the smart grid market opportunity facing industry.  As the article notes:

“…Networking giant Cisco has estimated that the market for smart grid communications will grow into a $20 billion-a-year opportunity as the infrastructure is built out over the next five years, and a new report from researchers at Specialists in Business Information (SBI) forecasts the market will grow to $17 billion per year by 2014 from today’s $6 billion. That’s a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 21 percent through 2014 for technology that will provide better sensing and control systems and help integrate more renewable energy into the U.S. power supply. Globally, SBI expects the market for smart grid technologies to grow to about $171 billion by 2014 (with a CAGR of nearly 20 percent), up from approximately $70 billion in 2009.

This represents sizable growth and a pretty big market, but let’s put it in perspective with some of the other markets created through information technology:

  • The worldwide market for home-networking products, like game consoles, TVs and set-top boxes, will rise to over $94 billion in 2010, from about $74 billion this year, according to ABI Research.
  • The worldwide revenue from semiconductors was $255 billion in 2008, which was a decrease of $14.5 billion from 2007 revenue, according to Gartner.
  • Worldwide spending on IT, which includes consumer and business spending on computing, IT services, telecom and software, is forecast to total $3.2 trillion in 2009, a 3.8 percent decline from $3.4 trillion in 2008, according to Gartner.
  • The worldwide market for enterprise software is forecast to total $222.6 billion in 2009, basically unchanged from $221.9 billion last year, according to Gartner.


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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.