The Texas Public Utility Commission stopped relying on the deregulated market

See Amid Blackouts, Texas Scrapped Its Power Market and Raised Prices. It Didn’t Work: The Texas Public Utility Commission hoped its move would spur generation. Retail providers say all it did was generate billions in added bills. by Russell Gold and Katherine Blunt of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"Hours into widespread blackouts in Texas last week, the state’s power regulator took an unusual step: It stopped relying on the deregulated market to set electricity prices and did so itself.

The Texas Public Utility Commission said it raised prices to a market cap of $9,000 per megawatt hour during a six-minute emergency meeting Feb. 15, up from recent prices as low as $1,200 a megawatt hour, because the computer that was supposed to help match supply and demand on the power grid wasn’t working properly, and it needed to intervene to relieve a growing crisis.

But the higher prices didn’t result in additional power production, because many generators were dealing with frozen equipment or fuel shortages, and were unable to deliver more megawatts, no matter the price. Some electric-market participants now say the commission’s action turned an energy crisis into a financial catastrophe for many electricity buyers, who were left paying billions of dollars more for the same limited supply of electricity as before."