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

Peer-Based Transactive Energy Grids: Creating An eBay-Like “Smart” Energy Market

Via SmartGrid Library, an interesting follow-up article to an earlier post in which we referenced this potential electricity eBay: The PowerMatchingCity pilot in the city of Groningen in Holland deploys a number of innovations in policy, market models, and technology.  One of the most intriguing innovations is their creation of a framework to enable easy […]

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Green Button Is A Red Stop Until Smart Markets Exist

Via E&E Publishing, an interesting article on the federal Green Button initiative and how “…utilities have smartphone-style dreams for ‘smart grid’…”  I say “interesting” because it just continues to emphasize the industry and government’s failure to understand that information in and of itself – without a transactional capability and motivation system – is simply not […]

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Is There An Electricty eBay In Our Future?

Courtesy of the Smart Grid Library, an interesting article on the evolution of peer-based energy grids and the idea that consumers of today may be producers (or suppliers) in the future as well via distributed smart markets: The Smart Grid can deliver significant changes to consumer interactions in electricity markets. Today, consumer enrollment in demand […]

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How Facebook Could Change The Game For Sustainability… Or Not

As frequent readers know, we have covered the trend of gamification on this blog and shared our doubts as to its long term impact/sustainbility absent smart markets.  But, finally we have what we believe is a real “canary in the mine” moment for those championing gamification as the way forward. Following close upon an interesting […]

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Communist China: Testing One Of The World’s First True Smart Markets For Water?

Courtesy of China Daily, a report on an innovative market-trading scheme being tested in China to address Ningxia’s chronic water shortage.  It is very interesting to consider that we may have to look towards Communist China for one of the first true smart markets for water… A villager waters a donkey in Haiyuan county, Northwest […]

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Oh Power

Courtesy of Miller-McCune, an article on software company Opower which thinks it can get consumers to use less electricity by instigating some friendly neighborhood competition.  We have oft discussed our skepticism of the long-term fatigue effect of simple information sharing and peer group ranking but, to be fair to the overall smart grid debate, here […]

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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.