They don’t know. They can make an educated guess.
There are technologies being developed that recognize “signatures” of certain kinds. The last study I saw was trying to differentiate between different types of incipient fault conditions. But to my knowledge, no residential meter, smart or otherwise, has the capability to differentiate loads. And even if they could, I don’t think the utility would invest the kind of cost that would be associated with it.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/4270075.pdf
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