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

Smart Water Grid On Tap?

Via CleanTechies, an interesting report on the potential for a “smart” water grid.  As the article notes: “…It’s been a great year for the Smart Grid. Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, analysts, journalists, and regulators can’t stop talking about it. Experts are competing to project greater market potential. Zpryme puts the Smart Appliance market alone at $15.2 […]

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Malta: The World’s First Multi-Utility Grid Should Save Water and Money

Courtesy of IEEE’s Spectrum magazine, an interesting report on Malta’s smart grid deployment, a comprehensive strategy comprising meters, pricing, and other incentives to move people towards more rational conservation and use. “In the Mediterranean, nobody wants to pay for anything!” my cab driver bellows as he drops us off at the headquarters of a Maltese […]

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Electricity + Smart Meters: The ‘New Math” Does Not Compute

A few interesting articles on consumer engagement as it it pertains to electricity smart meters today. However, while reading the first – titled “Electricity: The New Math” – it struck us once again that many of the so-called ‘smart meters’ are purely just digital meters with a more relevant, easy to read, interface.  While helpful, […]

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California’s Smart Meter Story Continues To Evolve…

Two very interesting articles about smart meter initiatives in California and how the smart grid may unfold.  As we’ve talked about many times before and what these authors note in eloquent style is that the consumer focus continues to be missing in many of these deployments and strategy discussions, an absence which – from our […]

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Finland Connects Smart Grids, Smart Meters, and Social Networks

Courtesy of Wired, an interesting look at the explicit link Finland’s plan to connect smart meters and homeowners to social networks, ushering in an unprecedented, community-based grid dynamic.  We have long advocated a more consumer-oriented, transactive smart grid so we will watch closely how this initiative – using a combination of smart meters, social networks […]

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The Smart Grid As A Bridge Between Utilities, Customers, Interest Groups, and Politics

Courtesy of Greenbiz.com, an interesting article on utilities’ need – in order to assert the full potential of the smart grid and prevent this transformation from becoming a utility “bridge to nowhere” –  to lay hold of the inherent “gap bridging” power of the smart grid itself.  As the report notes: “…We need a smart […]

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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.