Maybe. My parents at that time were on time of use metering, but it was fixed time. For example the water heater was on a timer to turn on at 11pm when electric rates went down.

• could they have figured out a networking technology for more dynamic time of use metering and response? Networking existed, as did integrated circuits
• my parents also had thermal storage electric heat. That alone could have made a huge difference in balancing demand with supply

Put those two together and you could have dynamic demand response even without grid scale batteries