[stefan_]

I think the point is that no price would have made any extra electricity supply available. All this $9000 imaginary price did was provide the remaining generators with an extra $8000/MWh and causing a number of electricity wholesale buyers (far from only Griddy) to default.

It's not like any generator is making money having a power plant sit idle, they are losing tons. Any positive price is incentive enough, but no level of price can make whatever is causing the outage to be fixed in 4 days. The Texas grid is an entirely isolated system.