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

Consumers’ Perspectives: The Smart Grid Is Actually About Benefits To Me, Money, and Control

The July/August 2009 edition of Intelligent Utility had several articles highlighting consumers’ thoughts on the smart grid and commercializing the intelligent utility, many of which echo our themes of the need for smart markets to motivate consumer engagement of a smart grid and smart meters.  For example, an article entitled “Smart Selling and The Intelligent […]

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Avoiding The Smart Grid “Bubble” Via Innovative Consumer-Oriented Applications

Via Earth2Tech, an interesting article on the continued rise of the investment bubble around the smart grid and one area – innovative next generation consumer-oriented applications that will run on top of new infrastructure (such as smart markets?) – that still offers significant potential.  As the report notes: “…While the idea of an investment bubble […]

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Next Practice Platforms: An eBay For The Environment

Via an interview on NPR’s Living On Earth radio program, mention of an independent project that this blog’s authors are working on: “…CURWOOD: So, how feasible is it to apply the Bushmen’s survival skills to developed countries? WORKMAN: Well we have technology that they don’t. And our greatest technology in the last few years developed […]

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Energy Savings Certificates: A Useful Model For Energizing The Smart Grid?

Courtesy of Environmental Finance, a report on an interesting Indian initiative to develop & deploy an energy efficiency trading system via which companies – if they beat certain targets – would be awarded energy savings certificates (ESCerts), which they could either sell or bank for future use.   It would be interesting to see if a […]

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Needed: A Transactive Grid With Pricing/Monetary Signals

The Lexington Institute’s recently released report entitled “Moving Forward On Smart Grid” makes several important points in its chapter named “Conservation and the Grid for Tomorrow” that again affirm the critical need for a transactive grid with price signals that motivate consumers to act & conserve.  In sum, consumers need more than information to conserve, […]

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Giving (Eco) Credit, Where Credit Is Due…

Courtesy of Toronto’s Globe & Mail newspaper, an interesting report on the efficacy of environmental incentives vs. costs & penalties, plus a look at an intriguing initiative to develop eco-credits.  As the article  notes: “…Most of us feel at least a twinge of an ethical obligation to take care of our natural environment. We know […]

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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.