The reason they are so keen on deploying smart meteres...
is that they will allow "demand management". i.e. in an ideal world, the ability to communicate with appliances in your home and tell them to enter a "low power state" when the demand is outstripping the supply capability.
Of course what this will really mean in the real world, is that they can remotely turn off power to individual houses (i.e. yours!) on a much finer granularity than can be achieved with the current mechanisms of demand management. Not only that its cheaper than building the power stations actually needed.
This is what you get when you spend loads of money on renewable power generation capacity that is not despatchable on demand, can only actually provide a tiny fraction of the installed capacity over the year, and that requires that you build the same capacity again in a conventional power station to make up for when its dark and the wind is not blowing.
Which begs the question, why not cut out the middle man and just build the nukes required instead?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
