[sokoloff]

There's no fundamental technical reason. It costs money to install the smart meters. It would cost more money to install control systems and automatic transfer switches, but even the smallest generator-backed (or multi-feed) datacenter has all the equipment technically needed to implement what you describe. Many large UPS units have everything as well.

It's probably an additional $3-6K on top of the smart meter to build in such switching (an ATS and a control system to understand the current/projected rate and switch based on it). For this event, going down to your main panel and flipping the main breaker for a few days would have accomplished the same thing for no cost.

I suspect the same people who bought Griddy's save money almost all the time plan are not the ones likely to install $5K of extra switching equipment at their house to protect themselves from a multi-day deep freeze event in Texas. Certainly no landlord is going to install that where they bear the costs and maintenance so their tenants can buy cheaper electricity.

[cpwright]

The smart meter can already be disabled remotely. I have one in NY that will alternate between its reading and "CLOSED" meaning that the circuit is connected. As a parent poster pointed out, the power company, however, cannot disconnect you without proper notice.

[ArkanExplorer]

Every second appliance has Wifi nowadays - but we need an industry standard that allows consumers to control usage based on price, perhaps by assigning specific appliances in your house to your energy retailer web account, and then allowing the retailer/grid operator to control when they are turned off and on (or to adjust their energy intensity) in return for a monthly discount.

For example just by heating and cooling houses a few hours before people get home, we can shift a lot of demand towards the middle of the day when solar power is abundant, and away from evening peaks.

We're definitely going to need something like this for widespread EV usage, where cars can potentially upload power to the grid.

Government has a role here in setting standards. They are the ones who get blamed for high energy prices or outages, anyway.

[rfdave]

That's awesome. Now I have to buy all new appliances, with poorly implemented WiFi stacks, trash all my older, fully functional appliances (Oh, how environmentally friendly will that be?) to let my local power company save me $20/month. Sounds like a fantastic deal.

[htrp]

http://www.thinkecoinc.com/

These guys used to do this in NYC.... would let ConEd turn off your AC in the middle of the summer

(Under the hood it's an IOT zigbee hub)

[sokoloff]

They're not grid-reactive, but for $20 you can get a programmable T-stat already. That's a huge part of the peak demand in cooling-dominated climates. (Heating demand peaks tend to hit overnight, of course.)