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

The Year of Social Utilities: Why The Smart Grid Needs A Facebook

As frequent readers know, we’ve long championed consumer engagement with the smart grid via durable remunerative incentives.  We believe lasting engagement will only truly be cemented by giving consumers transactional capabilities with the smart grid.  There is, however, another aspect that we have been watching and – to shine some light on it – we’re […]

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A Smart Grid Defined: “One That Empowers Consumers…”

Courtesy of The Atlantic, a clarion cry for a smart grid that is defined not in what it might offer interest groups, or why it’s a “good idea” for utilities, but in how it will empower consumers to save energy and money, encourage innovation in technology and markets, and create a stable atmosphere for investment […]

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Consumer Power: Time-To-Drawer, A Home Energy Management Bubble, and The Need To Engage Consumers

Courtesy of Clean Techies, an interesting article on the power of energy consumers, specifically the need to engage consumers or risk watching the home energy management & energy information display industries fall flat.  Of course, we have long championed the need to engage consumers – this article gets close when it says “…onsumers might start […]

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Utilities In The Dark Over Customer Engagement?

A triumvirate of articles all focused on “how can utilities get customers engaged with the smart grid?”  I’ll highlight the noticeable sections of each below, but doesn’t it strike readers that this question is posed backwards?  Rather than having utilities determine how to “engage” customers with the smart grid, perhaps giving customers a reason to […]

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Making Every Drop Count: Utilities Get Wise To Potential of Smart Meters and Smart Grids

Courtesy of The Economist, a look at utilities’ efforts to turn their “dumb” infrastructures into something more like a central nervous system: “…LONDON’S streets can be a bit of a maze, but below ground things are even more complex. Water pipes crisscross the city in all directions. Some areas used to have competing water companies, […]

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Smart Grids Require Smart Prices

Courtesy of The Harvard Business Review blog, an interesting comment on the importance of dynamic retail pricing.  As readers know, we are advocates of fully functioning “smart markets” to activate smart grids and smart meter deployments, and this regulator’s views are at least a step in that direction.  As the article notes: “…Electric utilities need […]

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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.