On power markets, snow storms, and $16k power bills

Nonsense. There should be a price ceiling to consumers during natural disasters like this and regulations powerful enough to mitigate them more effectively.

People are not able to make rational financial decisions when reducing power consumption means your 11 year old child could freeze to death. I think the death count from exposure (freezing to death) in TX during that period is now 4, and I expect that will climb as we get a more full picture.

Meanwhile, many office buildings and rich neighborhoods had relatively uninterrupted power. What resulted in this class-stratification of power availability?

An energy exec was recorded on a call saying that the storm was "very good for them" in reference to the high profits made during the storm. Should these companies be allowed to rake in cash on one side of the system while passing thousands of dollars bills to their consumers on the other side to profit off human misery and misfortune?

On the other side, other energy companies skimped on winterization, leading to their gas lines freezing. Does anyone think "not being able to price gouge during the 4 most profitable days this year" is sufficient market-punishment to change behavior of these actors?

ERCOT and the energy players built a system that killed several people and made hundreds of thousands miserable. Author says "ERCOT is not evil", but I disagree: intent is irrelevant if greed motivated lack or risk management results in this scale of death, misery and destruction. Everyone working to make energy a "free market" in Texas has a share of the blood on their hands from building a system that led to this outcome. There should be a thorough investigation and several people deserve to end up in prison as a result. But, being that this occurred in "free market" loving Texas, I won't be holding my breath.

Perfect example of why basic human needs should not be run as a for-profit "free market".

When I lived in the poor part of town, "energy deregulation" companies were always coming around, aggressively trying to get me to sign up on the spot.

They never talked about risk, they just told me I could sign here to save $100s on my power bill. I asked them about the details and they just lied through their teeth.

This was in MI, not TX. Maybe Griddy is different. I suspect they farm out signup to the same type of contractors.

I think the idea of consumers responding to energy prices is nice, but has some pretty glaring issues.

How many consumers are aware of hourly energy prices? How many on deregulated plans even understand that they pay more when usage is high?

Can they react fast enough to changing prices? Leaving a light on during vacation should cost you some money, but it shouldn't wipe out your 401k.

This article seems to suggest the answer is a fully automated smart home, with some kind of AI to intelligently manage your power usage. Sounds awesome, but I don't think that's ever going to be a reality outside the valley.

At the end of the day, it still comes down to losing power or losing 5 figures of cash that you probably don't have. Most people aren't in a position to be "homo economicus" when it comes to heating their home in a blizzard. It doesn't solve their problem to give them a choice between losing power, or going bankrupt. Many will choose to lose power, and die running their car in the garage just the same as if they had a blackout.

If price sensitivity causes someone to set the AC on 80 the hottest day of the year, that's great. But expecting consumers to handle tail risk is a silly idea.

I suspect you could get 99% of the effect by only passing a small price window to consumers, and managing the tail risk collectively.

I would also be curious in how the Texas case works. Especially if the grid is down, would it be able to accept the energy you are producing?

In fact your plan was probably counterproductive since the cheapest power to you came when it was most expensive to the operator--over night.