The appliances are being built. Depotoo and I posted the examples from GE.. Today your garage door can be converted into an internet appliance just as easily as your fridge. Like I said, today it is a voluntary option and the user can allow the power utility to schedule their appliances TODAY. THe advantage supposedly being taking advantage of "off peak" pricing. California is already starting to enforce a requirement of having HVAC units capable of being INDIVIDUALLY disabled by the central grid controllers..
So much for BillOReally's claim that the power company can't come thru the outside service box. They CAN TODAY if they are INVITED IN. In fact, the control signaling is ALREADY there in a Smart Meter.. Tomorrow -- you won't have a choice when the grid starts winking out from all that flaky wind and solar you guys bought.
You 2 yuck it up about my "background".. I have been blessed with a very productive and amazing career.. And I don't claim to have "a degree in EE".. I have SEVERAL in and around Electrical Engineering. PM me if you want to chat about machine intelligience, optical computing, biomedical instrumentation, circuit design and firmware, Shuttle launch instrumentation, communications and signal intelligience gathering, earth resource image processing, virtual reality simulation or any number of related projects I've contributed to..