Thing is they aren't expecting everyone to comply. The small print on this does actually state that you shouldn't even try to if you have young children.
It is more designed to be a nudge approach in an attempt to try and change enough people so the system can cope. That means if there are enough people who are considerate and adjust their patterns then it will benefit everyone.
I'm on board with that, because there will be a financial benefit to me to do so anyway, if I can cook during daylight. So it's a little more inconvenient but not a disaster for me.
The alternatives include not just blackouts but also a higher tariff for electricity usage at peak times. Both are toxic and will particularly badly affect vulnerable groups like families with young children who are also amongst the most likely to be badly affected by the cost of living crisis.
Certainly in the past when it was just DH and I we would regularly eat after 7pm so after 8pm wouldnt be a big deal. We would both be in late. Having a child changed our routines and lifestyle. Now we have a bunch of clubs etc and DS needs to go to bed so we HAVE to eat early.
This is where MN is probably not the best place to find people willing to adjust behaviour because they are the group excused and not the intended target for this messaging. Other groups might be a lot more receptive to it - our population is demographically older and these people are those who will remember the 1970s so perhaps will be more inclined not to face a repeat. If you can get a sizeable proportion of pensioners and younger child less couples to shift patterns later it might well be enough to make a difference.
As i say we were already planning to do something along these lines anyway, before we saw this story, for our own reasons so its not one that particularly bothers me. There are plenty of other families who could batch cook at the weekend and this would be to their financial advantage to do so. Getting people to think about the problem now and come up with solutions which work for them is no bad thing.
Its not going to be a dictate with legal penalties for not doing it. But there could be practical and economic penalties for not enough people doing it. We are going to see a lot more thing in future along these lines about changing patterns and behaviours so we should get used to it. Simply because our current carefree patterns of behaviour are unsustainable and our levels of consumption of resources are untenable.