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

Trading Water, Saving Water

Via PERC Reports, an interesting article on how water markets help the West cope with supply-side shocks and evolving demands: A drought swept through California in the early 1990s. I remember my second-grade teacher painting a bleak picture to our class about how we could literally run out of water, and that there might not […]

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Creating The Global Energy Internet Via Transcontinental, Submarine Supergrids

Courtesy of Bloomberg, an article on efforts to create the global energy internet: Ever since President Xi Jinping pitched the idea of a “global energy internet” to the United Nations six years ago, China’s been trying to persuade the world to build the high voltage highways that would form its backbone. That plan to wrap […]

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A Seriously Long-Term Investment: Inside SunZia’s Transmission Adventure

Via Clean Energy Finance, an interesting look at one private company’s efforts to build transmission lines: INCUMBENT UTILITIES ARE NOW COMPETING with private developers to build transmission lines. New business models may enable deeper decarbonization. SUNZIA, A PRIVATE TRANSMISSION DEVELOPER, is constructing lines to supply California with evening wind energy to compliment daytime solar production. Its turbulent history […]

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Can Millions of New Ford F-150 Trucks Become a Clean-Energy Storage Grid?

Via Curbed, an interesting look at how mobility, battery storage, and other innovations may impact the grid of the future: Listen, I think you should be able to get rid of your car if you want to. It should be easy to get everywhere you need to go on fast, frequent, fare-free public transit or by using safe, shaded, […]

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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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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.