Right... the wholesale cost was artificially being held low during that time because ERCOT was load shedding by disconnecting consumers.
The algorithm just sees load < available power and sets the price.
This means that as the load continued to shed, wholesale price would have continued to plummet, which would have caused more generation to go offline (as there's no demand for it, and price per kWh is dropping), which is the exact opposite of what was required to stabilize the grid.
Generation needed to be brought back online, and wholesale customers still connected to the grid (think large industry) should have pulled their load off the grid to restore capacity for the retail consumer.
The algorithm just sees load < available power and sets the price.
This means that as the load continued to shed, wholesale price would have continued to plummet, which would have caused more generation to go offline (as there's no demand for it, and price per kWh is dropping), which is the exact opposite of what was required to stabilize the grid.
Generation needed to be brought back online, and wholesale customers still connected to the grid (think large industry) should have pulled their load off the grid to restore capacity for the retail consumer.