Bingo, Dan. I've observed that often the most vocal proponents of Free Markets are the people that do NOT participate in one.
Here, to create the PERCEPTION of a Free Market, you can sign up with other companies for the consumption ONLY portion of your electric bill. Meanwhile, the incumbent is awarded enough fees and slush fund charges (regardless of what you decide to do) that even if you switch "providers", it is revenue neutral (at worst, typically they are making more money regardless) for the incumbent utility.
A sham, at best.
I do not want ANY utility controlled automation in my house, for several reasons.
1) I'm already controlling my consumption fairly well, in my case there would be little benefit to their load shedding programs.
2) I was talking with a senior Electric Utility Engineer last year. He related a conversation he had with a counterpart at another utility. They were discussing implementing system control technology, specifically technology that PRE-DATED the most recent generation of Smart Grid hype. Eng #1 - "....of that generation technology, we've implemented about 25% of what we had available to us". Eng #2 "Wow, I'd say we've only implemented about 15%, you are way ahead of us".
Important enough to repeat - they were talking about PRE Smart Grid technology.
3) Early Adopter people I've talked to locally have tried utility controlled load shedding, with very poor results. Not only did their billed $ jump significantly, the load was running when it wasn't needed at all - very badly managed to say the least.
4) The consequences of certain equipment ending up-offline/down at the wrong time is not worth the risk to me. At -40C, no fun having your furnace down.
Utilities are typically not very good at implementing cutting edge technology quickly. Mostly, I'm OK with that, providing all parties keep that first in mind.
I WANT conservative, olde School engineering practices left in place until there is absolutely no question of new tech goofing up.
I never want to hear about somebody having to Control/Alt/Delete ANY power station.
Jamie/Bird - I've gone jogging in Dallas in June - even at 5am, it is impressively hot/humid. I saw an elderly lady cutting her lawn at 5:30am, likely not that unusual given the climate !
Rgds, D.
And in spite of all 4 of them being 3 speed fans, we never change; just leave them on the middle speed all the time.