Re: Not so smart!
Smart meters are for "demand-side management".
In order to reduce the cost of standby generation for intermittent renewables, the idea is to modulate down demand in times of low supply.
Some of this will be by paying industry to shut down. Yes really.
But the other side of it is to cut domestic usage. In other countries, "load shedding" is used, i.e., power cuts.
That's not politically tenable here yet, so instead there will just be variable pricing. We will implement our own power cut when the smart-meter-display-thingy tells us we are paying £5/kWh.
This has been quietly admitted in certain quarters.