3,658 karma · joined March 25, 2010
If the price goes up 10000x there will be blackouts in any case regardless if spot pricing is used or not. Spot pricing will _reduce_ blackouts.
I think your apartment complex example is not that realistic as it won't affect the spot price. Something more like a war will..
Most houses in Finland have a (decent) fireplace for heating in case of an electric outage.
Note that electricity generated will first be used by the consumer and only excess is sold to the grid.
It's claimed that another type of market would cause companies to speculate with their sell offers and thus generate less electricity. It would be interesting to see how this kind of market would work in reality, though.
Nuclear can also follow loads, but there's no economical need to build them to do that (in almost any market).
Traditionally water heaters were only on at night.