[cydonian_monk]

The way the natural gas issue has been explained to us over the last two days is there are two issues. First: natural gas is prioritized for home usage, which has understandably skyrocketed over the last several days. There was not enough left in the gas market for the standby power plants to buy up to burn; and what was available was inaccessible due to price and price caps. Second: The standby generating plants themselves suffered failures due to excessive cold. This also affected coal and nuclear plants (one of the reactors at the South Texas plant shut down automatically after the intake water in its cooling pond froze).

The emergency charges for the spot prices changes from that order are recent news that I've not had time to digest yet and as such can't reply to.

Apologies for not providing sources - barely have cellular data service at the moment and have only had electric back for a handful of hours. (Edit: And I jinxed myself there... back in the cold dark again.)