The company I work for manages those demand response programs. Many of them now also support smart L2 chargers that can also be controlled similar to the therm

The company I work for manages those demand response programs. Many of them now also support smart L2 chargers that can also be controlled similar to the thermostat you mention. We also still, at the end of the day have a greed problem. My local utility, for example (smaller, very monopolized one in the socal mountains) has halted being able to get credits from feeding solar back into the grid. They've all but made getting home solar irrelevant unless you have an expensive battery system like a Tesla powerwall or similar. I live in an area at altitude where it's sunny for much more than average and we are prime candidates to have solar on every home - but a greedy local utility has halted nearly all progress that the last decade has seen.