Apparently those flex requests aren't about saving the environment; it mostly has something to do with power grids needing to operate at a certain range at all times and spikes in demand fucks with that. That is to say, if they increase the energy produced, they actually have other problems at times of reduced demand, like at night or winter time. I'm paraphrasing from a pretty brief thing I heard over the radio, though, so I'm sure it's more complicated.
They still cut corners and cause wild fires because they don't update their tech and prefer to have things fail, though. Plenty of reasons to hate your private utility companies, lol