| > The issue is not one of supply, but of generation. Generation is supply. If it freezes, supply decreases. > It's entirely possible that it isn't profitable for them to do the winter-proofing. It's only needed once every decade or two. In which case once every decade or two you have to suppress demand through pricing. > This also ignores that power demand is largely inelastic during a winter storm in a state where homes are not built to withstand them. You can get your house to zero electricity. Drain the pipes etc. and turn off the main breaker. You're not going to want to live in it then, but staying in a hotel for a few days costs a lot less than $15,000. There are also less drastic alternatives which would be taken by people with the ability, e.g. a lot of people have gas generators. Give them a sufficient price incentive and they switch off the grid and use their generator. Which happens at a lower price than it takes to cause people to move out, so it happens first. Compare this to rolling blackouts where you just freeze people at random without notice and their pipes burst and flood their home etc. |
You assume that the hotels won’t also be charging market rates of thousands of dollars per day.
You assume that any of these such mythical hotels that have power, and are open, and aren’t charging thousands of dollars a night, will actually have any vacancy that you can fill
All these assumptions were recently proven false down here in Austin.