[toast0]

That makes sense. Running laundry or other household equipment when energy is cheaper makes sense, but it requires a different time commitment. Cooking at other times to save energy costs is unlikely.

You'd get more participation if appliances could be smarter without increasing cost. The holy grail of delay freezer defrost cycles until off-peak, and relaxing temperature thresholds a bit to pre-heat or pre-cool towards the end of off-peak and let things go a bit farther off the set point while on-peak aren't realistic for say water heaters, because the increased consumer costs to do that (more expensive equipment, more time to set settings, most likely some signalling or networking to maintain) don't justify the savings.

I'm guessing there's reasonable uptake on smart thermostats that can participate in demand control, because smart thermostats are desirable anyway, network anyway, and can control large enough loads to matter. Not everybody will want it, but I'd be ok with starting peak a degree cooler or warmer than my set point, and letting the temperature float a degree farther during peak, because HVAC uses a lot of kWh and why pay 2x for those... but then I'm in a low energy cost area with flat rates, so maybe I would change my mind after experiencing it. :)

[Scoundreller]

Yeah, basically a human factors approach will work better than asking general users to vastly increase their cognitive load and/or increase capex for a small value of savings.

Free LED light bulb handouts are more effective than complex expensive-to-implement programs requiring user intervention. Mandating low gpm showerheads works better than asking people to take short showers. Better windows per building code works better than asking people to choose the exotic greenbug window, etc.