The almost complete lack of detail is why it is safe to call the Telegraph the Beano, in recognition of just how much the newspaper has been dumbed down. Gosden wiffles on about smart meters and wind farms, but she doesn't really tell you anything of the technicalities beyond comic level.

More troubling, perhaps is that the article is based on a Royal Academy of Engineering report and that also doesn't go into too much detail either. It also makes the error of linking DSR and domestic appliances exclusively to the use of smart meters. By this means, the Academy is more or less promoting the system, even if the benefits are very far from proven.

The crucial point, though, is that DSR in the domestic environment is achievable using appliances like refrigerators, employing what is known as frequency response, itself part of dynamic response. All the appliances need are fairly basic (and cheap) current frequency monitors, integrated into the electronic controls, which shut off the appliances when the frequency drops below a pre-set level - which happens when demand exceeds supply.

Such facilities do not require the two-way communication involved in smart meters. That makes the appliances relatively "dumb", so despite the scare headlines, this is quite a clever way of peak shaving - temporarily cutting demand to reduce spikes. It reduces the need for of expensive back-up generators and thus becomes a "quick and dirty" way of improving system reliability. It also massively enhances system flexibility.  

You really wouldn't get any sense of this from the newspaper story, though, although we are told that with such technology, the grid will be able to deal with levels of wind energy penetration of up to around 20 percent – until at least 2020. What you are not told is that this 20 percent is about twice what the system was originally thought capable of dealing with, before serious system instability was induced.

The Royal Academy now feels that the technical issues involved in balancing the system are "manageable if given sufficient consideration", which means that any sense of immediate crisis is dissipating - at least in one sector of the electricity industry. That also you don't get from the newspaper, but since the media have really struggled to report this story in the first place, that's not surprising.

We can say, though, that post-2020 is a different story, but that is a full electoral cycle away. It will have to wait its turn. Only long after whatever is going to happen is over, though, will the Telegraph tell you it is about to happen. Then will it become news.

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