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@feld I was not aware of that, so thank you for sharing it with me. I would be interested to know how soon it kicks in before residential customers are asked to conserve.

But it does still rub me the wrong way that ERCOT will pay them to shut down, and pay them ludicrously more than they actually would have made as a business ($22 million, according to that article). Seems like that money could be better spent being put towards that growth and expansion that you mentioned earlier. It's like those ridiculous farm subsidies where farmers get paid NOT to produce certain crops.

And that's just ONE business. How many others is ERCOT subsidizing? Where's MY check to not wash clothes?

IMO, the whole privatization of the electric grid here in Texas has been a huge mistake, because we can't draw power from the National Grid(s) when we need to without paying massive fees. And now, finding out that this business which makes far, far less than the resources that it consumes cost is now also having a physical effect on surrounding individuals, it seems to me that shutting them down and making all that energy that they consume available to everyone else - primarily individuals - will make the grid more resilient since it's only going to get hotter (and colder) as time moves on, at least for the foreseeable future.