For the almost two decades of its existence as an independent system operator, only electricity wonks, neo-liberal economists and systems engineers talked about ERCOT (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas). Then the lights went out last week , and then the water, and then a radically imperfect market design caused electric bills throughout the state to skyrocket . Not surprisingly a raft of investigations has begun. In the 1990s deregulatory fervor first took hold in California where electricity prices were already high compared with the rest of the US. This however was not the case in Texas, which, as an energy producing state rich in natural, fossil resources, enjoyed electricity prices below the national average. Nevertheless the ideological commitment to free markets held sway and Texas decided to deregulate. After all, the professional consensus among neo-liberal economists was that utility deregulation, embracing free market principles, would lead to efficiencies […]