In a competent implementation, real-time metering can enable near-real-time pricing where consumers are incentivized to vary their consumption to help grid stability.
Your EV can modulate its charging very quickly, and "background" loads like electric heating, water heater or even A/C can also be modulated somewhat quickly (though not as quick as an EV's inverter).
The meter needs however to make sure you indeed complied with the demand in order to pay you fairly (otherwise if people can defect on their obligation and still get paid, it defeats the purpose of the scheme of ensuring grid stability).
Doing this at the substation is not granular enough because then you can no longer determine who contributed what and whom to pay, which then removes any incentive for people actually participate.
In theory, this should lead to significant savings and efficiency benefits, as everyone opted into the scheme can now be used as an on-demand load to dump excess power (during which power is not only free, but the consumer may even be paid to consume that power) to smooth out supply/demand fluctuations.
Of course, the UK's smart meter scheme is administered by Capita, so don't expect any of this to actually happen, work reliably or actually lead to any kind of significant benefits, but in theory, it would be a great thing as long as it's done by competent people without corruption/mismatched incentives.
Octopus is doing hourly blocks, and is limited to a single provider. It's an interesting idea and broadly heads in the right direction, but is far away from what I'm describing.
What I describe would be real-time with seconds-level granularity and operated by the grid operator as part of the distribution network and thus provider-agnostic. The idea is to (financially) incentivize people to shift their demand and production around grid fluctuations in real-time - this should allow everyone to get "more" out of the grid by better coordinating supply and production and respond to unexpected events.
Your EV can modulate its charging very quickly, and "background" loads like electric heating, water heater or even A/C can also be modulated somewhat quickly (though not as quick as an EV's inverter).
The meter needs however to make sure you indeed complied with the demand in order to pay you fairly (otherwise if people can defect on their obligation and still get paid, it defeats the purpose of the scheme of ensuring grid stability).
Doing this at the substation is not granular enough because then you can no longer determine who contributed what and whom to pay, which then removes any incentive for people actually participate.
In theory, this should lead to significant savings and efficiency benefits, as everyone opted into the scheme can now be used as an on-demand load to dump excess power (during which power is not only free, but the consumer may even be paid to consume that power) to smooth out supply/demand fluctuations.
Of course, the UK's smart meter scheme is administered by Capita, so don't expect any of this to actually happen, work reliably or actually lead to any kind of significant benefits, but in theory, it would be a great thing as long as it's done by competent people without corruption/mismatched incentives.