Thanks for the replies.

While I do have "Time Of Day" service, someone in another group
mentioned that the water heaters Smart control unit "learns" to adapt
to useage and the timer may be interfering with it's ability to do that
as everytime it cuts power to the water heater it's also cutting power
to the smart unit and it will thus reset and have to relearn usage each
day and it may never be able to do that properly with the constant
power on/power off cycling which sounds logical to me so I disconnected
it this morning. I'm assuming that letting it go about it's business as
designed will save me as much or more as my TOD rate, yes?