This year has seen large volumes of investment activity in the smart grid sector, and not wanting to buck this trend, British utility Centrica has acquired Belgium demand- response (DR) startup REstore for $81m. The acquisition suggests that Centrica will increasingly push DR technologies as an option for customers across its networks, and can increase the speed at which consumers can access the efficiency benefits enabled by DR contracts in Europe. DR contracts are distributed on capacity markets, where a utility anticipating a surge in the supply of electricity on its network (that could potentially damage its infrastructure), can place a contract for energy consumption to be reduced on some parts of the network – balancing the grid, often through…