I'm making the assumption that by National Grid, you mean the UK's electricity system operator, with National Grid (private company) being replaced by a NESO (public company).

> had in mind that electricity demand should decrease

Does this mean the speaker wanted demand to decrease? The UK forecasts from the Future Energy Scenarios [1] show demand increasing (see page 21).

> intermittent availability of power.

I'm assuming this was related to demand side response. Page 37 of the Future Energy Scenarios pdf contains an overview of this.

I worked at an EV smart charging start up (Kaluza) between 2019-2022 and my experience doesn't line up with a couple of your points:

> You won't be able to wash your clothes when you feel like

During my time at Kaluza the customer could charge their EV whenever they wanted.

> you will have to adapt to when there is spare power,

The customer set their minimum state-of-charge (0-100%) and we would always have it charged to that amount by a specified time, irrespective of demand. We aimed to charge the customer's EV when demand was low (there are UK markets we can sell this ability to - these markets may have changed since I was there), which would save them money, but meeting the minimum SoC was the most important thing.

> This is just a regression in technological progress

Reducing peak demand reduces the amount of infrastructure you need and makes better use of what you have. IMO it's a good upgrade that makes much better use of the assets on the grid.

Vehicle-to-Grid (or Home) charging takes this up a level by feeding power back to the grid. This "What’s next for Vehicle-to-Everything?" PDF [2] is 4 years old now, but has some good data on V2G and the benefits it brings.

1. https://www.neso.energy/document/364541/download

2. https://info.kaluza.com/hubfs/What%E2%80%99s%20next%20for%20....

National Grid can mean NGED, NGET or NESO, god I love the UK. 2/3 of those are completely cuckoo regarding long term planning so not surprising to hear those comments.