""What went wrong with the Texas power grid?" – Houston Chronicle
A number of people question ERCOT’s management of the grid. Mr. Hirs from U of H thinks we need to return to a regulated supply. His complaint is that generators have no incentive to build generating units yet the article points out the $9000/kwh price for the last added kw. What an incentive but not if happens once every 30 years. Allocating capital is what the pricing mechanism does. Several times state and the federal governments intervened in the market which causes unintended consequences.
Each consuming unit has the option to install backup generators. Some can afford it, others cannot. Industrial, buildings, retailers make the decision to invest in backup generators and weigh the cost versus the benefit. I made the same choice and based on the $12,000 cost I decided the rare outages do not justify the investment. Maybe I need to reassess my decision. Apparently a number of residential owners have decided to install backup generators. Not too long along the Houston Chronicle ran an article about the shortage of generators and the leadtime local installers have. Those people may not be affected as much by the weather if their fuel is not interrupted. Most are natural gas powered which appears to be in short supply.
ERCOT offers a program to large users called Demand Response. The users that enroll are paid to remove their electricity load from the grid when supplies are low or an emergency exists. Most have backup generators that replace their load.
After reaching the comment limit I wanted to add that near me a HEB store has a bank of backup generators as do some other grocers. HEB made a decision to invest in these because the risk outweighed the cost in their calculation.