We had a situation here where extreme weather and a natural gas pumping station that exploded caused real problems in our natural gas supply. The utility asked everyone to lower their consumption by turning their heat down to 65.
Luckily, that was the extent of the rationing.
The way I understand it, this is useful both in time-critical emergencies (like keeping the grid at 50 Hz when a nuclear plant suddenly goes offline for some random safety reason) and when things are moving a lot slower, like during periods of extreme colds and extreme electicity demand from heating houses.
So, this approach is useful in removing the need for rolling blackouts, at least until demand reaches some very extreme level, but it does require ahead of time investments in shutdown agreements.
Perhaps Texas hasn't been in this extreme situation before, and they simply don't have enough industrial shutdown agreements in place?
(citations needed.... I'm recalling this from a story someone told me ~15 years ago about the Alcoa plant in Victoria, Australia)
The waves of Enron took out most of them decades ago when its destruction rolled through the energy markets. IIRC, the last NW aluminum smelter closed a few years ago.
I would guess that there is an ~0% chance any bitcoin mining operation, who's main cost is power, is still operating with power prices as astromonically high as they currently are.
https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/over-200000-people-in...
That was only good for those of us still with power, though.
Scary as hell in the beginning, but only nervousness-inducing at the end.