For most of the last 60 years I've used electricity on the assumption that it is "there" at the touch of a switch. Now, from the discussion above, it seems to me that we shall have to get used to using electricity when it is made available to us, not when we want to use it. This is not progress.
There's no reason why a well-managed house should get anywhere near breaching 80A/19KW at peak loading. Spread all your needs out over 24 hours and you have a total available energy budget of over 450 KWh/day, which should be enough for anyone unless they want an aluminium smelter in their back yard too.
Tim, you forgot EV batteries as part of the smoothing process: within the EV community there is an expectation that we will all plug our cars into the charge point when the car isn't in use so power can be drawn from the battery at times of peak demand and then replaced when there is excess power. Fine in theory, but not quite as simple as it seems. It assumes that the majority of homes will have a tethered EV charge point and that the car's battery life will not be shortened by a high number of charge/discharge cycles.
Who is going to pay for all the new hardware and enhanced infrastructure? The consumer, obviously!
I shall not be in a rush to change anything: we have gas and I'll use it as long as I can as the main source of energy. Yes, we have an EV nd an air source heat pump that is an A/C / Heater unit in our bedroom.
Somewhere I have an article from the 1970s that describes how to modify a mid sized petrol generator to run on natural gas. That could be worth trying!
