> One interesting option is the option to let customers choose where they want to be on the reliability vs price scale.
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> t could just as easily be implemented by your own electricity meter - effectively a breaker which opens when it detects crisis.
What you're really talking about is demand response. It's been around a while in both commercial and residential settings.
It doesn't really address reliability to the extent that reliability depends on investments in distribution, transmission, generation, fuel to the generators, etc. If those aren't there, it doesn't matter if the user has opted into reliable (non-interruptable) power, because the power won't reliably be at the meter to begin with.
It addresses reliability by shedding the customers who don't pay a premium for reliability first. Most of the time, that can solve the problem. It is, as you say, imperfect because it doesn't allow that premium to be used to fund investment in reliable generation.
One interesting option is the option to let customers choose where they want to be on the reliability vs price scale.
Typically, in times of crisis due to undersupply, an electricity network cuts off customers (blackouts).
However, this needent happen at the district/region level. It could just as easily be implemented by your own electricity meter - effectively a breaker which opens when it detects crisis.
Crisis can be fairly easily measured from the power itself - when the supply of electricity is tight, the frequency and voltage drop.
That means a supplier could theoretically have customers choose what reliability they wanted, and set a switch on the back of their electricity meter to give them the reliability they had paid for.
The downside is that this system only works if the majority of electricity meters behave this way.