>Raising the spot MWH prices to 9 billion USD would have made no difference in what could be brought on-line, only how badly load serving entities were getting screwed.
Why not? If it's expensive enough you'll get people flying in spare generators from out-of-state to supply the demand.
In the middle of a winter storm that has shut down nearly all transportation and frozen the well-heads for natural gas production? riiight.
Unless the Navy happens to have a few nuclear vessels parked in the gulf ready to hook up, it is literally impossible to move hundreds of MW of generation in a week, much less the 20 GW that Texas needed at the time.
Why not? If it's expensive enough you'll get people flying in spare generators from out-of-state to supply the demand.