Good - but why wait till now, if (as it seems) there's no obstacles. The ideas have been around for ages.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/18/uk-energy-cheaper-rates-electricity-bills

"Officials said such a move could send “sharp” signals to encourage consumers to be more flexible in their usage and seek cheaper, greener energy at certain times"
and
"The initiative would minimise network costs by bringing electricity demand closer to supply"

TBF the actual news is of a government consultation about reforming the wholesale electricity market to encourage renewable generators - longer term contracts, payment for predictability instead of per MWh, lower prices in regions that have excess renewable energy that day, that sort of thing. You can respond if interested.

The journo perhaps thought that was all too complicated or boring for their readers to understand, so snipped out a few paras about time-of-use pricing and wrote a headline about that instead (which has indeed been around for ages, although not much take up from the 'traditional' big energy companies who are the ones surviving the current shakeout).

The passing mention of the National Grid report is more interesting. They have forecasted for several scenarios in which energy is decarbonised.

The first involves consumers embracing time-of-use consumption and heat pumps to balance renewable generation. The second involves consumers not getting involved, and so utilities will need to pay for long term storage, carbon capture, nuclear, and hydrogen distribution, to decouple time-of-consumption from time-of-generation. Both scenarios get to net zero, the first is cheaper, hence the wholesale market reforms to encourage that.

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/future-energy-scenarios

The consultation is about wholesale markets, so domestic metering is not a main focus. But the idea is to have a higher price during cold weather, and a lower price on windy weekends, so yes a smart meter would be needed.

One idea is for a heatpump supplier to switch 1000s of their customers' heatpumps on/off, to make a virtual mega battery, which could bid for grid support fees (IE they agree to switch off for an hour if the grid is struggling, in exchange for a daily payment). The supplier deals with the admin and pockets the payment, and the customers get their heatpumps operated at the cheapest times of day without them paying attention.

Another idea is that if it is windy in Scotland and calm in Cornwall, the Scots will get cheaper power and vv., so everyone shifts their usage to the cheapest days.

Posted By: WillInAberdeeneveryone shifts their usage to the cheapest days

or shifts themselves to Scotland!

Absolutely! Yesterday afternoon, over 20% of UK electricity was from PV, so the intent of the market reform is to make sunny afternoons into cheap electricity periods, along with windy weekends.

The big electricity demands are expected to be for heating/DHW and for electric car chargers. The newer ones of those are already 'smart' enough to respond to a signal over the internet of "it's cheap right now" or "it's expensive right now".

Or, a new breed of service companies could provide more sophisticated thinking like "charge up your EV to 80% now, because it will probably be more expensive tomorrow", and switch your charger on/off accordingly. That kind of automation is needed so consumers don't have to pay attention themselves (most can't/won't). The market needs to work out who those service companies will be, who trusts them, and how they get paid.

The UK smart meters have some limited bandwidth to send those on/off signals to appliances such as EV chargers, using their "ALCS" function. However, manufacturers are not using this, they seem to prefer using the internet to convey those low-security on/off/price signals, and keep the secure smart meters network reserved for the fraud-sensitive functions, such as billing.

Posted By: Cliff PopeThat might over time tend to occur at around the same time each day, a bit like rush hour tending to occur at the same time, but there would be no guarantee

That's a good vision of how it might work out in practice, for most people, leaving super-finesse (and momentary ultra-low or negative price bargains?) to enthusiasts.

Posted By: WillInAberdeena new breed of service companies could provide more sophisticated thinking

Why wouldn't the incumbents do that, perhaps after new 'disrupter' cos force the pace?

Posted By: WillInAberdeenThe market needs to work out who those service companies will be, who trusts them, and how they get paid

I wouldn't necessarily trust my electricity supplier to tell my heatpump when to heat the house, they have vested interests, and a poor service record. I might trust the heatpump manufacturer a bit more, or maybe not (what do they know about it?). Ideally I would trust a uSwitch type of outfit, so long as they weren't on comission.

The switching service provider will also be getting paid by the grid, to switch off customer's car chargers whenever the grid is overloaded (the virtual battery thing) so we'd need to know how much they are getting paid for that and whether they are sharing that fee with the customers.

Posted By: philedgeAt the same time as PV was doing its 20%, gas power stations were doing 40%+ of generation. Given weve got schools, hospitals, public transport, workplaces etc to run, personally I dont think anyone should be encouraged to use any more electricty than is essential.

True, but for the rest of the day there was 45-55% gas power, so would have been best yesterday to encourage people to charge their cars at noon rather than in the morning/evening. Will become more pronounced in near future as large PV farms work their way through planning, we could have 40%+ PV some afternoons.

Posted By: WillInAberdeenI wouldn't necessarily trust my electricity supplier

Posted By: WillInAberdeenI might trust the heatpump manufacturer a bit more, or maybe not

Posted By: WillInAberdeenIdeally I would trust a uSwitch type of outfit

Posted By: WillInAberdeen[who] will also be getting paid by the grid, to switch off customer's car chargers whenever the grid is overloaded

So maybe, as the only entity unequivocally motivated to even out demand, maybe the Grid should

Posted By: WillInAberdeenprovide more sophisticated thinking ... and switch your charger on/off accordingly

That sounds like unintended poor consequences of contorting a worthy objective (that's natural and obvious to rhe Grid) - demand smoothing at source - into some ideological market-concept of 'virtual battery service'.

Posted By: WillInAberdeenFrom the Grid's perspective, it looks and feels the same as if a big battery has been connected

I understand that, but crazy if the Grid is debarred from developing such schemes, when it has a natural incentive to do so wholeheartedly.

Yes, those are the regulations they are consulting on now, among others, such as how anyone will get paid for doing this kind of thing. Send your suggestions in!