[causi]

The price going up during power shortages, even to that level, is reasonable. Making people pay that rate without warning them they're about to do the equivalent of running their oven on champagne is what's nonsensical bordering on evil. Even without the use of smart meters or some alert system, a page on their signup paperwork that says "Energy prices may increase drastically during overload conditions. Please indicate the maximum rate you are willing to pay" with a few checkboxes at 2x, 5x, 10x, 25x, 100x, etc would be fine.

[Karrot_Kream]

+1 You just need a circuit breaker here. It's a classic case of resource exhaustion. At some point your system's production is just too far from its consumption and the queue will not drain.

Spare the people their money and protect your own service. Win win.

[viraptor]

Are there any smart metres which can do this? I'm not familiar with Texas, but every place I lived at was basically always connected and the gas/electricity would have to be turned off manually. I know pre-paid metres exist, but that's slightly different.

[causi]

Even something like sending a text to the phone number attached to the account with a warning would be fine.

[Aloha]

I'm not sure any consumers ended up paying those rates in the end.

That said, the pay-go market rate plans do make (it's in the electricity facts statement) it abundantly clear that you'll pay more, potentially a lot more, during extraordinary times.