I think we agree more than we disagree. An overnight timer is ideal right now while most base-load comes from coal and nuclear, and power is cheapest at night.

I think we agree more than we disagree. An overnight timer is ideal right now while most base-load comes from coal and nuclear, and power is cheapest at night. But as we move past combustion (I'm in Michigan and the amount of coal we burn for power is absolutely shameful) and into more solar, it's less predictable. I can't set a timer that knows when the sky will be cloudy. This is why I'm so excited to see EVSEs that take data from PV inverters and have a "PV surplus only" mode, where the car is charged only when the sun shines, without ever importing grid power. Modulating 30kW of load is just as good as 30kW of storage, but costs nothing but a few lines of code. And yeah, networks and middlemen can suck it. Keeping it local is always better.