True, but sometimes there really is just not enough electricity to go around. Consider power outages due to natural disasters or even extreme load on the grid. In Texas, we have a handful of days each summer where the grid is maxed out in the mid-afternoons and ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) will come on the radio begging people to conserve their usage. This kind of product could mitigate that. There are also a lot of nuanced things that go on with utilities that influence their decisions: the electricity markets, regulations, issues at plants, industrial users, etc. Us sweating it out at our individual households don't mean a lot to them in the grand scheme of things.

Well, not necessarily. The idea being that you're planning to have it kick in at 5:00 for 10 minutes, but in order to smooth out the energy distribution levels, they push it to 5:10 instead, so you're still using your 10 minutes of AC, just at a slightly different time... That's my take on it, anyway.