[notch656a]

When you have an outage, it's possible the instantaneous cost of electricity is in fact 10x/100x/infinitely more than baseline cost. Looking at it as 100x more employees is the wrong direction. If you're producing 1/100th the electricity for 5 minutes due to power outtages but you still have to pay all your employees during that time, your instantaneous cost (per unit energy) actually are proportionally higher.

[ajross]

Total Texas energy production during the worst part of the crisis last winter was like 60% of maximum though. Most generators were running. If consumer had to pay a 2x premium then no one would have even complained; we'd have all said the system was working.

But that's not how it works, because as I mentioned the demand curve is non-linear. When you have 60% power, yet 60.1% of your capacity needs to go to "must keep the lights on" customers, then prices go to infinity (or in practice to the credit/spending limits of those customers making bids).

[notch656a]

You don't 'need the lights on.' I have lived in multiple third world countries where outages happen regularly if you have electricity at all. This is a failure of customers to adequately prepare and instead playing the victim because of their failures. People knew for years Texas grid was vulnerable, and it's an exquisite display of Darwin Award for those who didn't prepare for it.

Only a moron doesn't keep some sort of off-grid combustibles and cold weather gear on hand, even if you live in the most southern edge of our nation. The customer is to blame for paying, not capitalism.

[ajross]

> You don't 'need the lights on.'

Hospitals do. Street lights do. Network operators do. Just think back to the beginning of the pandemic and how many industries were suddenly discovered to be "essential". You're thinking from the perspective of "can I, personally, suffer a power outage in my own home[1]" and imaginging that "running a civilization" works like that. There are many entities who simply can't stop buying power.

> Only a moron [...]

Please think harder here. It's not remotely as simple as you think it is.

[1] Knowing that you can use your phone to reach effective emergency services in the event of need, of course.

[notch656a]

Hospitals are 60.1% of capacity? Hospitals have generators, also. Lets not make hypocritical statements about think harder.

>imaginging that "running a civilization" works like tha

And yet many rich civilizations do run just fine 'like that' and many may consider those civilizations just as good as yours. Your statement is simply ethnocentric arrogant elitism.

>Just think back to the beginning of the pandemic and how many industries were suddenly discovered to be "essential".

You're describing tyrants trying to shut down business. Being 'essential' was simply a chosen word of propaganda as part of a tyrannical process to destroy some people's line of work while favoring others. We are discussing free-market pricing and their interconnection with power disruptions and acts of god.