Let's say a power station fails unexpectedly. There are several options.
1) Wait until Parliament can reconvene to debate and pass a law which limits people to x kWh of electricity per day with a maximum of y kW at any moment.
2) Let people suffer rolling blackouts / brownouts as the energy supply struggles to keep up with demand.
3) Have a team of technical experts (the horror!!) send signals to people's washing machines asking them to only switch on when there's surplus power.
Quite obviously (1) is impractical. And (2) is the sort of self-sufficient Libertarian nonsense which imagines a hellscape for everyone except themselves. And (3) is... boringly pragmatic. I guess with the slight risk that it might be abused to... what? Deny people their constitutional right to run a high power vacuum cleaner whenever they want?