> A big reason why others did not have power is because those that did did not reduce their consumption by much.

First, that was the big manufacturers. ERCOT couldn't force big companies off the grid, and they didn't go off grid until the press noticed and started complaining.

Second, the Texas grid has insufficient granularity to actually shed enough non-critical load to do rolling blackouts. There are too many "critical" things connected to the same circuits as non-critical ones, and it would cost money to split those loads (something Texas just ain't gonna do).

Third, the base production got hit because fundamental natural gas infrastructure wasn't winterized, froze and exacerbated the whole situation. It would cost money to fix. (aka: something Texas just ain't gonna do)

Finally, when you don't have big industrial consumers defining your power grid (aka massive overprovisioning), you can't "shed load" your way out of trouble.

The fundamental problem is that, like so many things in the US economy, personal consumption is so low that it doesn't help when the problem is systemic. We've optimized houses with insulation, LED lighting, high-efficiency appliances, etc. Consequently, the difference between "minimal to not die" and "fuck it, who cares" in terms of consumption differential isn't sufficiently large to matter when a crisis hits.