Gordon Burditt wrote:

The often-stated case for smart meters (for electricity) is that
they allow for time-of-use billing.

I thought one of the cases for smart meters was that they allowed
the utility to avoid having to build more generating capacity for
peak loads and replace it with "greenouts":

The answer to that depends on how your electricity infrastructure is
constructed on a corporate level.

Some (or many, or most?) utilities just maintain a local distribution
grid and don't actually generate any power themselves - they just
purchase power for re-distribution to their customers.

The north-american power grid is large enough, and diverse enough, to be
about to (a) always have spare capacity somewhere on the grid, and (b)
be able to move that spare capacity around so it gets to those that need
it, when they need it.

The free market (such as it is) has resulted in new,
privately-owned/operated plants (mostly powered by natural gas) to be
built and connected to the grid to supply "peak" demand power when and
where needed. And the owners are compensated accordingly by charging
very high rates.

I've never bought into the idea that there wasn't (or wouldn't be)
enough electricity supply to meet demand. At least not in eastern part
of north-america.

Now, perhaps there have been issues with there not being enough wire (or
big-enough wire) to carry this demand, but that's a different story.

I think removing the need to build generating capacity saves them
more.

Regardless who builds new plants: If the premis is that these costs ARE
ALWAYS FULLY RECOUPED during operation (and then result in a profit for
the owner/operator) - then what you just said doesn't make any sense.