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Long rant warning:

"There seems to be the bizarre idea that we all leave the electric oven on each day and that smart meters will mean we're suddenly aware of it."

But we do, and that's what they don't like. Higher energy appliances like washers/dryers, ovens, aircons etc are only ever used during the day, because, well, we're awake. Problem is, everyone else has the same idea, meaning a chunk of the power generation plants that would LIKE to run at full capacity 24/7, can't, and are forced to run full in the middle of the day only, thus taking much longer to make their money. They charge on the energy they put into the grid, so it's in their best interest if you were to "spread" your energy useage evenly over the 24 hour day period.

Smart meters are not designed to save the consumer money - so let's cut that bullshit right now. Their job is to force consurmers to shape (or re-shape) their energy usage to more evenly spread over the 24 hour day. They do that by (at least here in Oz) charging 3-4 times the usual tariff rate for onpeak, compared to regular old skool meters, and a tiny fraction for overnight offpeak use.

This has the potential to make power generation more efficient, because you don't have plants running at bare minimum baseline overnight, and only full bore in the middle of the day when aircons are on. (yes I know that's exaggerated, but you get the idea) And while that's great, there might be a couple of downsides to this. Firstly, the consumer has to spread their heavy energy consumption to overnight. That means, no aircon at all (here in Oz you only run it during the day when it's friggin' hot), and you have to stay up into the offpeak period changover to do your washing, drying and cooking. And this might be a little bit of an inconvenience to general consumers, because society dictates you operate 9-5, which leaves your offpeak time to, well, sleep.

Don't even start me on lighting. It is by far at the opposite end of your majority energy use, and it's mostly used overnight (offpeak) ANYWAY. And my rant wouldn't be complete without stating I'm happy the "standby power" bullshit myth doomsdayers have gone by the wayside. Good friggin' riddance to them.