Re: Capacity
greenwashing is what you're doing to gas.
The weather is *always* good enough for a heat pump - you just have some grudge against the idea of preserving the planet in a state where we can carry on living.
This concept that heat pumps don't work when it's cold is only slightly less intelligent than flat earth...
Local control is an upgrade - because it *is* consumer control. The meters aren't what gives the control, but they allow for dynamic pricing - and that encourages consumer control (whether individual or using other services).
EVs, or their chargers, can time their usage, you can set the timer on your immersion heater, my storage heater is on a timer.
There are some "electron retailer" controlled devices - the Ohme EV chargers can be controlled by Octopus - and *all* the electricity you use whilst that happens is charged at off peak - that's far better than a radio clock signal - for both the consumer and the electricity retailer. You just set how much electricity you want by when, and it happens.
There are also other systems with external control - Mixergy tanks will stop heating at times of peak grid load, they'll still heat if they *need* to, but they'll delay if they can.
For all the "end up costing consumers more" bollocks you spout I pay far below the 27p you claim for electricity - it's been 9.5p over the last year. Gas over a similar timescale (309 days) has cost me 10.9p. Interestingly I've used similar amounts of each this year so far (8.3kWh electricity, 7.4kWh for gas) but I expect gas to overtake electricity as the year finishes off with colder weather, and since the price has recently dropped, and I expect higher usage, the overall cost of gas will drop somewhat. However since the price of electricity has also recently dropped, and the value of exported electricity has increased - that value is unlikely to rise much, despite the lower insolation as the year ends.
Yes - Vimes Boots - I appreciate that I was able to put some more environmentally friendly technologies in place last year, and I expect to continue doing that (when my current boiler fails for instance).