My guy, the sign-up information for those schemes expressly asked customers not to switch everything off and sit in the dark [1]. For this exact reason.

I've seen all over the internet in the last few days posts similar to yours with doomsaying and misery which will jeopardise the success of future schemes by confusing people about the purpose of the actvity. The idea was to measure how customers could reasonably move some energy use outside of the peak hours - where gas turbine plants need to be kept on standby just to manage. With a little thought and care, perhaps boiling the kettle a bit earlier, running the dishwasher a bit later, a small difference can be made which was the purpose of the experiment. No "energy nazis" are coming to tell you to switch your lights off at 5pm.

If you check grid demand history [2] you'll see that the UK is not close to needing to ration power or risk blackouts.

[1] https://octopus.energy/blog/saving-sessions-energy-tips/ [2] https://grid.iamkate.com/ or https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electr...