About $16 billion in overcharges for wholesale electricity racked up because of a pricing error during the massive failure of the state’s power grid last month won’t be reversed, after Texas utility regulators rejected a recommendation that they make the change.

“It’s just nearly impossible to unscramble this sort of egg,” Arthur D’Andrea, the new chair of the Public Utility Commission, said during a commission meeting Friday.

Potomac Economics, a Virginia-based firm that’s paid by the state to provide an arm’s-length assessment of the Texas power grid, recommended Thursday in a letter to the commission that the overcharges — which were billed to retail electric providers, distributors and others — be reversed by retroactively lowering wholesale electricity prices for a 32-hour period beginning Feb. 18.

The overcharges occurred because the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the grid and is commonly known as ERCOT, kept the prices at the maximum level allowable — $9,000 per megawatt hour — during the 32-hour period. ERCOT should have stopped intervening by then because the power crisis was over […]