Wealthy people could install solar + batteries to ensure they only use grid power in the cheapest of times.

Poor people can be told they'll save hundreds of dollars on their electricity bill but often don't realize it means they need to turn off the AC when its hottest and turn off the heat when its coldest.

Right. I get the social equality aspects of the argument, but charging the fully burdened price for energy (i.e. which includes time of use) seems like a good way to get people to conserve smartly instead of wasting resources. It does make sense to turn down the A/C a bit when the grid is stressed, but there's literally no incentive to do so without some sort of realtime pricing. In fact, it makes MORE sense from an individual standpoint to turn it up as strong as it can be so if the power does go out, your house will stay cool a bit longer. That, collectively, increases the probability of the grid going out. It's a collective action problem, and without some sort of incentive to conserve use and greatest demand, it increases costs, emissions, and fragility of the grid.

It's good that wealthy people install solar and batteries to only use grid power in the cheapest of times. We literally want to incentivize wealth being put to productive use (in this case, reducing stress on the grid and--in the case of solar especially--emissions). That means more resources for others.

Of course usage policy is good. In Ontario, we have 3 tariffs, high demand, average demand, low demand. And yes, I do adjust my electricity usage based on that. But this is standard, this doesn't change every week and it surely does not go up to thousands of dollars in the middle of a climate emergency. You can reap the benefits of having higher fee during higher demand periods without having the insanity of letting the market decide the price without any cap.

You missed the part where all ratepayers get to pay off bonds for decades for a few days of incompetence-fueled crisis.

> * It's not only the plug size, it's also enabling me + my neighbors chargers to communicate so we can optimize load on the electric grid.*

It means you can use a 30-50% smaller amount of solar, wind, transmission, and batteries, roughly, enabling cheaper energy, lower embodied emissions, and a faster energy transition (meaning reduced overall emissions). (And this applies to things like nuclear, too.)