"A fundamental flaw in the freewheeling Texas electricity market left millions powerless and freezing in the dark this week during a historic cold snap.
The core problem: Power providers can reap rewards by supplying electricity to Texas customers, but they aren't required to do it and face no penalties for failing to deliver during a lengthy emergency.
That led to the fiasco that left millions of people in the nation's second-most-populous state without power for days. A severe storm paralyzed almost every energy source, from power plants to wind turbines, because their owners hadn't made the investments needed to produce electricity in subfreezing temperatures.
While power providers collectively failed, the companies themselves didn't break any rules. Texas officials don't require plant owners to prepare for the worst by spending extra money to ensure they can continue operating through severe cold or heat. The high prices operators can reap from such periods of peak demand were supposed to be incentive enough for them to invest in safeguarding their equipment from severe weather." [1]
It turns out that such a stimulus is not enough. A government whip is needed. The same with the resilience of systems in Lithuania. The pandemic has shown that medics need to have reserves in case of a pandemic, and the state needs to check this regularly.
1. The Texas Freeze: Why State's Power Grid Failed --- Electricity outages revealed shortcomings in market structure
Blunt, Katherine; Gold, Russell. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]20 Feb 2021: A.1.
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