What would be even better would be if power-producers and distributors (or, more likely, aggregating intermediaries) made available some APIs that provide real-time data on pricing, sources of power and a degree of "peek a little way into the future" prediction. Then we could build/install devices that take advantage of that data. e.g. A fridge could heuristically trade off power price, next-hour likely pricing, source (maybe I prefer green energy or energy generated 'close by', and am willing to pay some premium; maybe I don't care and just want cheap), internal temperature and local time-of-day usage patterns affecting temperature management. (I chose 'fridge' as the example because its energy consumption can be time-shifted, but only to some degree. Eventually it is going to want to switch on regardless of energy supply conditions.)

On the flipside, appliances (water heating, fridges, cold-rooms, space-heaters,e tc.) should be encouraged to talk back to the suppliers APIs to indicate likely near-future demand, current constraints and demands and so on, so informing the 'grid' with demand data at micro-scale.

I guess this is something like what people might mean when they speak of making the grid 'more intelligent'...