I used to work for Alstom Grid (now GE Grid), and I was kinda abstracted from specific use-cases, but we developed energy markets [0] that I believe are relevant to what you're talking about. Our energy market tools allowed companies to bid for electricity and schedule their work. So if you had an energy hungry rock crusher that can run at any time of day, you could buy or sell energy depending on the supply/demand curves. But apparently not every utility participates in the energy markets.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_transmission_organiza...