Forcing people to pay what electricity actually costs (ideally, in real-time) is a good way to make your demand-side much more responsive. That's only a valid

Forcing people to pay what electricity actually costs (ideally, in real-time) is a good way to make your demand-side much more responsive. That's only a valid strategy if your customers can be more responsive, but in a freak cold snap where most customers are running heaters at 100% to keep their homes habitable, there's little they can go to reduce demand. Many people have purchased generators after that crisis, but telling (and maybe subsidizing) millions of people to buy a generator and stockpile fuel because the grid can't handle cold weather is not good energy policy. It'd be better if regulators required demand-response automation that would let them intelligently scale back demand of high-energy appliances before the grid reaches critical levels without heavy-handed rolling blackouts.