They already do time of use in some parts of the country. Some are optional like up north you can have your AC on a seperate meter and they charge you a lower rate but they have the capability to turn off the meter when demand is high. I have friends and relatives that have done theirs and they have never shut the power off to them at peak load.
Some do have a true peak hours electricity fee rate.
Then there are places like here where we were deregulated and prices skyrocketed. Now we have lots of so called providers but there are only about 3 real producers with txu being the main one. (They split txu into two companies one delivery one production at the time of deregulation)
Some of the providers are offering plans with free night and weekends electricity. The catch is you are still paying all the taxes and delivery fees on that electricity so it isn't really free.
It's their way to start edging into peak rate fees.
As for the free appliances. Yeah it isn't a big amount of $ for the Elec companies and it's probably a write off anyway but it still wreaks. Not to mention those frigginair refrigerators are not the best on the market and usually have a short service life. Lots of compressor failures and their electronic defrost boards are a high failure item that run around $80 for the board and new wiring harness.
You may save $ on electricity with that new fridge but you will end up shelling out the savings in repairs (common for stuff these days)
And as for reducing the need for generation plants that is needed in many places however in tx it isn't an issue. A few years ago they started shutting down electric plants due to having way too much generation capacity. These were mainly natural gas plants, only a couple coal plants in south tx) Some were totally decommissioned but many of them are pickled so they can fire them up when the demand is there.
Even with the vast population explosion there isn't a need for more generation, yet anyway...
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