That's the title to an interesting article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "The utilities fought each other for natural gas, which supplies more than 50 percent of electric plants in that area. And while widespread blackouts were avoided, in the end, the prices of both electricity and heat quadrupled when they were most needed. *** That is a cautionary tale for Pennsylvania and the electric grid that serves it -- Valley Forge-based PJM Interconnection, which is expecting an influx of new, gas-fired power plants and the retirement of more than a dozen coal plants over the next several years."
More? "Yet few natural gas generators hold 'firm capacity' contracts, which means the gas supply they're buying can be interrupted if another customer with priority needs it or if supply is somehow constrained. *** Firm capacity contracts guarantee that the volume a generator is buying will be delivered at the time needed. Consequently, they're more expensive than interruptible supply."
Read it all.