A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Author Archive

Keeping Current: Shenzhen Launches ‘Virtual’ Power Plant In Hunt For Energy Gains

Via Week In China, a report on Shenzhen launches ‘virtual’ power plant in hunt for energy gains When electricity is in short supply, it’s even more important to optimise the usage of what you have. That, in a nutshell, is what virtual power plants (VPPs) can do – tracking the electricity supply from various sources and […]

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P2P: A Smarter Way of Energy Trading

Via Power Ledger, a look at how a peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading system can optimize energy trading in a grid-tied multi-microgrid system: This case study focuses on the implementation of P2P energy trading and planning of a grid-connected distribution system using an advanced optimization approach. The proposed network architecture consists of three microgrids and uses real-time […]

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P2P Based Local Energy Markets Can Benefit Power Grids and Energy Users

Via Power Ledger, an interesting case study of how a P2P-based local energy market can benefit both power grids and energy users: The increasing amount of renewable generation creates challenges for the energy providers. Variable renewable energy (VRE), as the name suggests, creates a varying or fluctuating electricity supply. A local energy market (LEM) helps […]

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Grid Locked: Can South-East Asian Countries Learn To Share Power?

Via The Economist, a look at why a super-grid connecting Southeast Asia remains a long way off: It takes just three hours to fly to Singapore from Vientiane, the capital of Laos. To transmit electricity between them, however, has taken eight years. In June and July both countries undertook an experiment in energy exchange. Electricity […]

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Crypto and Climate Change: Can Web 3.0 Help Get Us To Net Zero?

Courtesy of The Financial Times, a look at how new tech ventures want to use blockchain to clean up a messy carbon market: Last year, a British oil exploration company and a tech start-up joined forces on a project to permanently lock away untapped fossil fuel reserves in Greenland. The idea was simple: the energy […]

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Tesla’s Virtual Power Plant Helped With California Grid Overload

Via Input Magazine, a report on how Tesla Powerwall customers provided as much as 16 MW of power during a recent California grid overload: Tesla’s Virtual Power Plant program got its first workout this week in California. During a widespread strain on the power grid, Tesla reached out to the pilot program’s participants to ask that they […]

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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.