Whenever they have a spike in demand, the de-regulated prices go up by several hundred percent. Example
I’d be shocked that anyone puts up with this, but then I remember how the healthcare system “works.”
Just like to point out that Jerry Jones (the owner of the Dallas Cowboys) made almost $1 Billion, with a B, during the big freeze because he owns the natural gas fields and his good budy Governor Abbot said that wholesalers must sell for the max amount as allowed by law during that time, basically legalizing price gouging.
Most residents aren’t on these types of plans. The ones that are turn shit off, or pay through the nose.
Generally the ones that are on those plans are the most vulnerable. I’ve got a fixed TXU plan. The up front cost of being on it was a couple of hundred bucks because I had bad credit at the time. The pay as you go variable rate places don’t have that up front cost and when it’s not peak times they’re significantly cheaper.
Unfortunately they don’t always let people know in time when the rates spike. So these vulnerable people don’t even realize they should be turning shit off or they’re not home to do it or it’s a heat wave/ice storm where they could just fucking die if they turn off climate control.
It’s been a fucking mess down here in Houston. My electricity came up pretty quickly and I was able to head west and grab a hotel for a night so I didn’t get heat stroke. I’m lucky. I was able to come back and eat the brisket I smoked before Beryl came through (I’m a stereotype, sue me). But there are people who still don’t have electricity in this fucking weather and there are others who have to decide between their fridge and their AC.
I’m drunk, bitter, and pissed off tonight. So I’m gonna ramble.
I thank my lucky stars to be in San Antonio where we have municipal power.
People complain about CPS (city public service) but we get a say in how the company is run and our bills are quite reasonable compared to the state average.
They don’t
Most of us don’t pay the market price hour to hour. Our electricity provider absorbs the risk of price spikes and raises our rates if the math stops working for them.
Griddy was a provider that sells at the market rate, which is usually below the general price you would pay, but you take the risk of price spikes during peak demand.
I’ve done lots of tech projects within the retail energy industry in Texas - this is the right answer.
To expand a little bit:
Retail energy providers (REPs), like NRG, ClearSky, Just Energy, etc. make their money by forecasting the amount of energy that will be needed as far in advance as possible and purchasing that amount from power generators like CenterPoint and marking it up a few cents. The farther out, the cheaper they can get it. I’ve helped build forecasting engines for a few that ingest historical usage data from meters (all meters in Texas are smart meters), weather data, and others to use machine learning to forecast how much individuals will need and aggregate it together to help the energy traders make better informed trade decisions farther out.
If they mess up or an unforeseen event happens and they don’t have enough energy bought for that time segment (forgot the term for a window of time they use), they have to go to the spot market which is where the prices fluctuate and can be many many multitudes higher than the rate the customers are contracted to pay.
In a storm scenario or a freeze, it can be thousands of times more expensive because demand is so high and supply is so limited. This is when REPs go bankrupt if they don’t have the cash on hand.
There are also insurance plans that the REPs pay for that cover very specific conditions for different types of events or outages that can kick in to cover the huge costs they would otherwise incur on their own buying electricity at that spot rate. I’ve known a few that were only able to stay operating because someone a few years prior had bought an insurance policy that covered said weather event.
Griddy died because of the ice storm in Texas a few years ago and the huge costs people incurred. I actually met with their CIO the year prior as part of a technology assessment of their stack. Nice guy.
Edit: also you can largely thank Enron and Rick Perry for deregulating Texas’ energy - which directly led to the terrible “performance” of the Texas grid during the winter storm Uri in 2021. Same for Enron in the constant blackouts in California in the early 2000’s.
Griddy
Thank you! So much misinformation floating around, its ridiculous.
I live in Finland and me like a large number of other Finns have a plan in which the price changes every hour according to the market price. Typical price for electricity is around 4c/kWh in the summer and around 15c/kWh in the winter. However it’s not uncommon at all for the price to spike into 30c/kWh or even 70c/kWh. Last winter there was a day that it spiked to 200c/kWh.
How do we deal with it? By turning down/off the heating if possible and burning wood instead. If not then you just deal with it and have to pay significantly more for a few months. Then again if your plan has a fixed price to like 10c/kWh then that also mean you’re paying that even when the price drops to zero which also is not uncommon at all. Often happens several times a week during the summer time. Sometimes it even goes into negative. It’s still not literally free though since the transfer cost is around 6c/kWh plus energy fee and taxes.
So it costs you more when it costs more to produce, but when it’s free to produce it still costs you money.
Love corporations
No… First of all: electricity is never free to produce. Running a powerplant costs the same no matter what price the electricity is at. The price goes to zero when supply greatly overceeds demand. That means I’m not paying to the electric company for the electricity but I’m still paying for the company that maintains the grid to deliver that electricity to me. It doesn’t just magically hop from the powerplant to my house.
How do you keep up with the current price? Does your thermostat have a setting where if the price is above X then turn off? Do you just come home to a freezing house and say “oh the electric is too expensive, guess I’ll grab some wood”?
I check sahko.tk in the evenings to see if it’s going to be particularly expensive the next day. This is mostly in the winter time, at summer I hardly pay any attention to it. They usually warn people in the news too for the handful of really expensive days in a year. Depending how high it gets I might turn off the heating for the peak hours but generally not because it doesn’t really make that of a big difference as the prices average out over a long period of time. Some people have automatic thermostats that turn off the heating after the electricity price passes a certain limit. My water heater for example is set to go on during the night when electricity is at its cheapest.
Energy pricing in Texas is managed for the benefit of the utilities, not their customers. Some of the people on non-fixed plans who got charged insane amounts just went bankrupt.
Texas is a nearly perfect example of how the Republicans think everything should work.
Close but not correct.
It’s an established marketplace, where legislated “middlemen” buy from the utilities and then sell to the consumer.
You can’t actually buy directly from the utility generating the power without going through the marketplace.
It is sold as a “free market” that would drive competition and keep prices down. In actuality, it just allows leaches, who don’t actually produce anything, to sit in the middle and suck money out of the economy.
Sure some of them will lose money, while others will make a billion, but the system works just fine as a regulated controlled monopoly.
Texas is a perfect example of Republican hypocrisy. The Governor, Lt Governor, State AG, etc… are quite literally the worst kind of politicians.
I seriously dislike Sheila Jackson Lee, but I feel bad about her situation.
I would laugh if that wheel chaired, piece of shit rolled off a cliff.
I would laugh if Dan Patrick caught on fire.
On second thought, I might use Ken Paxton to put out the fire, by that I mean, push him onto Dan, hoping he would catch on fire too.
Shit, that went a lot darker than I intended.
Oh right I see here the old fallacy that economic agents have a full thorough understanding of all the choices and make fully rational decisions based on all the facts that exist, because why would you have facts not accessible to everyone?
If you have a point to make, say it.
Free market is a lie
Economics is not a science
Let the down votes come
The article and comments here make me very happy to live in Quebec where the electricity is 0,067CAD per kWh for the first 40, then after it is 0,103CAD per kWh, and most of the time, that electricity is 100% renewable. In Québec we have many problems but the electricity is one big point to be proud of as a nation
A big part of that is it’s all state owned. Having private companies in charge of something as vital and important as energy infrastructure is just pure folly imo.
Yeah 100%. the current government here has a tendency to do bad stuff and a big fear here is they will slowly make it more private owned. But I think that every essential service should be state owned. electricity, groceries, clothing, internet etc. We have too few companies here that share too much of the market
$0.058 / kWh here in rural Oregon, it’s pretty awesome.
Now do the exchange rate.
How much is your income taxed? ~60%, like the rest of Canada?
The last bracket which starts at 235k is about 58% (but there are many ways to put money aside to lower your income bracket). But don’t lose our hair worrying if we will have to file for bankruptcy to get basic healthcare. In Montreal we have a top 10 world university that costs less than 1000$ per semester for citizens. We also don’t have to worry about people carrying guns around. But go on I guess
If you want to talk about taxes, include cost of your healthcare. Because that’s included in our taxes.
Fun fact, America pays as much per capita for healthcare through taxes as Canadians, but that only gets you Medicare and Medicaid. Americans sure get angry about a lot of things, but I never see them get angry about that.
Holy propaganda-muncher 😂
Maybe it depends on your energy provider and whether you have a fixed rate or variable rate plan? I don’t know if other places have those options or not. Check out powertochoes.org if you don’t know what I mean. Mine just went up from $200 to $300 this month with the heat. My highest is usually 1-2 months of ~$350.
$350? 😭 ive never had an electric bill above $150
That’s the neat thing! They don’t.
What’s so neat about it?
sarcasm
