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

Smart Meters Don’t Save Energy … People Do

Two interesting articles, both emphasizing the importance of consumers in the smart meter/smart grid manifesto being championed these days.  The first wisely notes that smart meters are just a tool – they don’t save energy; people save energy.  As the report notes, smart meters provide “…a tool that helps us to at least manage our […]

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The Smart Meter Backslide of 2010?

Courtesy of the Harvard Business Review, an interesting article on what the author calls the Smart Meter Backslide of 2010, the upcoming shakeout that is going to occur given the utility industry’s failure to engage customers in this transition.  Smart markets anyone?  As the report notes: “…Bolstered by stimulus funds and the growing market for […]

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Smart Meters – The Future Only With Smart Markets & Financial Incentives

Via SmartMeters.com, an interesting article on how the success for many smart meter deployments will not be based on which type of smart meter boxes are installed, but rather how utilities handle the mountain of data unleashed by these sophisticated devices and subsequently use this valuable information to help change customer behaviour and meet green […]

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Give Consumers A Reason To Opt In To Smart Grids

Via GigaOm, an interesting report on the power and potential of deploying demand response programs via an Opt-Out program.  The article below lays out the arguments in a cogent fashion; however, from our viewpoint, such a decision would not be necessary if smart markets gave consumers a compelling financial reason  and value proposition to participate […]

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The Smart Grid – It’s For More than Electrons

Two interesting articles today; both championing the idea that smart grids encompass far more than electrons and eventually will reach into the world of water.  As the first – courtesy to The Energy Collective – notes, we need to extend our thinking about smart grids to other resources such as water, waste water, gas and […]

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Smart Meters and Smart Regulation?

Courtesy of Berkeley’s Legal Planet blog, an interesting look at smart meters and smart regulation.  As readers of this blog know, we are not sure if meters or regulation can truly be “smart”; we prefer smart markets which can provide end users with incentives and motivations to conserve.  That said, the article notes: “…The poor […]

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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.