Big Brother

[Steve]

My understanding is that the fridge, or perhaps other appliances, will have a chip that monitors the mains frequency - this is a good indicator of the state of the grid, the frequency drops as the generators near maximum output. The chip will switch off the fridge for a while, in order to prevent a massive surge of all the fridges coming back on together there will probably be a random element to the "off" duration.

This isn't a "Big Brother" situation at all, simply a desperate measure by companies and government who have utterly failed to adequately invest in new power stations despite many years warning about the closure of fossil fueled stations and end-of-life of the nuclear stations.