Did you ever attempt to reach out to Apple about how this should be implemented on the new kernel? I would hope there's some forum for this kind of question still.
It may in fact increase power use a bit because rendering black pixels needs more energy to excite the crystals.
I haven't contacted Apple because I don't think they are interested in implementing such a thing really. I've written more about why I think that here: https://lobste.rs/s/2zajeu/journey_controlling_external_moni...
But I’m sure I’ve went way past the 100k writes speculated limit with Lunar’s Smooth Transition and by testing Lunar 6 hours a day almost every day for the past 4 years.
It’s possible that this EEPROM issue might not be an issue anymore. Lunar has thousands of active users and there are zero claims of a monitor failing because of it.
It’s also possible that it’s just a problem waiting to happen and I’ll get sued to death in a few years, who knows.