I don't think it's overemphasized at all. Time shifting is only effective right now due to oddities of our current system that are in no way guaranteed to be permanent.
Once we get enough solar installed that it is powering most of the air conditioning when it's most used (which, contrary to what some are saying, is close enough to grid parity to be inevitable in many places), time shifting will be much less advantageous.
At some point, storage is going to play a huge role (there are places where it's already starting to, like Hawaii). It's frustrating that we're still having so much trouble bringing down cost per kWh, but with all the disparate technologies being researched, I think it will happen eventually. Just not as soon as some of us would have liked.
Well, that of course depends on whether you're talking about monetary efficiency (for which time shifting of large loads to lower night time rates makes monetary sense currently) or actual electrical efficiency (clearly needing a ton of work to properly improve upon).
Ultimately the latter is better, but there is so much nuance involved that I don't expect it any time soon. I personally believe that anyone interested in pushing the true efficiency envelope should be looking at getting the most out of off-grid systems right now, at least until more promising innovations show up within the grid itself.
Once we get enough solar installed that it is powering most of the air conditioning when it's most used (which, contrary to what some are saying, is close enough to grid parity to be inevitable in many places), time shifting will be much less advantageous.
At some point, storage is going to play a huge role (there are places where it's already starting to, like Hawaii). It's frustrating that we're still having so much trouble bringing down cost per kWh, but with all the disparate technologies being researched, I think it will happen eventually. Just not as soon as some of us would have liked.