Those high rates were because the power company had to buy on the spot market to deliver power to their customers, so it did indeed cost them.
Someone selling on the spot market did reap a windfall but it wasn’t the company billing the consumer.
“Someone selling on the spot market did reap a windfall but it wasn’t the company billing the consumer.”
It was the generators - whether wind, coal, nuke, or anyone in between. If they could have put juice on the grid they would have made bank. Maybe mitigated for NG units when NG prices spiked, but even the $9K/MWhr is huge.
They had every motivation to be and get online.
A lot of people got screwed in this, but the market signals to the generation assets was sell sell sell.