Re: pricing by capacity (kW) vs usage (kWh)
I have seen it suggested that (some?) residential Italian electricity supplies work like this - customer pays an agreed fixed amount for an agreed fixed supply capacity (enforcement mechanism wasn't clear - as you point out, traditional fuses make little sense for this unless the capacity is remarkably small). I'd be interested to hear confirmation or correction.
Regardless, if the cost of meter reading (and associated admin and maintenance) is a significant part of the cost of supply (as it allegedly is in the UK) then why not offer small scale users the option of a fixed capacity supply and forget about metering of usage. This might be particularly interesting in areas where electricity hasn't been much used for heating (space heating or hot water or cooking) because some alternative has generally been more appropriate.
Obviously it could never happen in today's UK as such a concept could make it possible to eliminate a large number of valuable paperpushing and accounting roles, and we can't have that happening in England can we.
But in some places and for some use cases it might make some kind of sense, maybe?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
