When the temperature dipped to 9 degrees inside his Austin mobile home, Laron Limuel took to sleeping in his Kia Optima sedan to try to stay warm. After days without power, a burst sprinkler pipe inundated Rosemary Sepeda’s apartment, ruining her walls, furniture and rugs even as the water crystallized into ice. The February cold snap that devastated nearly all of Texas sent Emily Kathleen Cahill to the St. David’s Medical Center emergency room.

Yet just eight miles from Limuel’s darkened home, Austin Energy’s Decker Creek Power Station operated most of that frigid week at close to full capacity. Ten miles from Sepeda’s wrecked apartment, the company’s Sand Hill Energy Center kept firing on most of its units, and though it dipped significantly for 12 hours on Feb. 15, the plant was never offline entirely. Farther afield, 65 miles southeast of Cahill’s south Austin apartment, the Fayette Project coal plant, co-owned by Austin Energy, churned out power as usual except for a five-hour stretch on Feb. 17.

It was a vivid example of the inconsistencies of the supposedly market-driven electric grid system in Texas. For 4 million households in the state, the consequence of the February freeze was life without power, and for many, without drinkable water. Dozens died. But for the companies that have a stake in that market, the blackouts meant that billions of dollars went chasing after diminishing electrons, and while some firms stand to lose fortunes, others — the ones with power to sell — have been reaping stupendous windfalls.

In Austin, Sepeda, Limuel and Cahill are all consulting with lawyers. They understand that this is just the beginning of the legal wrangling, as the cases could take years to be decided. That’s true, too, for the energy companies and financial firms squaring off against each other.

As those court cases are being prepared, state political leaders in Austin are feeling intense pressure to recast the electricity market to try to avoid another debacle — yet Texas flirted with one again on Tuesday. Mild weather, warmer than predicted, led to higher loads than the system was ready to handle, as customers turned on air conditioners. With about a quarter of the state’s power plants down for maintenance to be ready for summer’s heat, “we are in a condition that’s very tight,” said Woody Rickerson, vice president for operations of the agency that dispatches power, known as Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.