There aren’t a ton of smart appliances because there aren’t a ton of smart grids. We need smart grids with, like, really significant demand based pricing before people are going to care about smart appliances. And of course there’s no reason to get smart appliances if you don’t have that kind of grid.
Somebody has to go first. In the bright side it really is unambiguous whose job it is. Utility providers are often government subsidized or at least heavily regulated government-provided monopolies. They have the responsibility to act in the public good, and provide strong enough incentives to get people to come along with them.
We’re close to this. California, which is not the world but is a major market, has pretty transparent grids with variable pricing. I don’t know if they’re “first” but they’re a big enough market to drive change.
Electric Cars use a ton of electricity and have these sorts of features for a while now. Apple even built grid pricing info into their latest “Home” app for California users.
I think there aren’t smart appliances because there is no demand for people to change their behavior. No one is going to put off cooking dinner for cheaper oven use. We see it with cars and smart thermostats because it’s largely set-and-forget with people.
We should slowly expand what “set and forget” means. Dishwashers and clothing washers for example, we could modify our behavior a little bit without any major inconvenience (load it up, put in the soap, and then let it schedule itself, you’ll get a notification when it runs).
Ovens and stoves are, I think, an unusually bad case. Although, slow cooking should be shiftable, right? Maybe we’ll have to eat slow cooked ribs instead of hamburgers. You know, to save the planet or whatever.
Instant pots, kettles, dishwashers, microwaves and toasters all reduce energy consumption to do the same thing, but I don’t think anyone bought them for those reasons.
The most effective method to reduce/shift consumption is just to make it the easier way.
Adding cognitive load to shopping decisions and their daily lives is predictably ineffective for the general public (and almost universally hated).
That majority will be a bit poorer because of it, and many will cheer that aspect but it also means the target goal has failed.
Gas has its own set of issues, from terrible leakage in every stage of distribution, to microparticules during cooking (which directly affects the health everyone that lives in the household), going through the ecological impact of production, and without forgetting the really bad failure mode they have when buildings fail in areas prone to earthquakes.
Somebody has to go first. In the bright side it really is unambiguous whose job it is. Utility providers are often government subsidized or at least heavily regulated government-provided monopolies. They have the responsibility to act in the public good, and provide strong enough incentives to get people to come along with them.