For many people in the U.S., me included, this winter has been miserable. The polar vortex, which I'm fairly certain was a term only meteorologists had heard before this winter, has wreaked havoc in much of the country. ... This type of weather affects few, if any, industries more than electricity providers. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which is responsible for balancing the state's electricity supply and demand, reported an all-time high winter peak demand Jan. 7 and was required to issue an alert the day before when some 13,000 MW of generation--3,700 MW of forced outages caused...