I once had to pay about $1500 USD per kWh. That’s $90 USD to boil 1 litre of water.

Consequently I chose to freeze rather than turn on any heating. At that price even LED lighting is too expensive. I probably should have unplugged my fridge too.

But many people chose to keep themselves (and families) warm.

Lesson learnt: never pay the spot price for power. In minutes I probably lost all the saving I had accumulated by micro managing power until that point.

I have seen my fair share of data centers and office complexes switching to their diesel generators due to very high energy spot prices.

If you have an alternative source of power (even if it is a gas generator) I think a spot price contract is fine. Otherwise it is too risky for residential consumers.

I would only be on a pricing plan like that if I had a way to automatically cut off my service if price exceeded some limit. If this made power outages common enough I'd install batteries to tide me over most of them. Functionally this would be equivalent to an unreliable power system.

Ultimately, "shutting down the house, draining the water pipes, and going elsewhere" is a solution for extreme winter events.