5 ms·

I am not in Texas, so a couple of questions for those who may be affected by this story, because I've been wondering about this: 1. If you are on this plan, wh

by jerf 6y ago

I am not in Texas, so a couple of questions for those who may be affected by this story, because I've been wondering about this: 1. If you are on this plan, what is your visibility into current prices for electricity? e.g., are there any alerts that you could have signed up, even if you hadn't before? 2. Have you been bitten by unexpected high prices before, perhaps in the summer? 3. Prior to this event, would you say you saved money overall with Gridly?

egwor 6y ago
To 1.: didn't one provider email their client base to warn them of this?
- kingaillas 6y ago
  Yes that was Griddy that emailed their client base. Whether or not they did it and gave their customers sufficient time to do the switch is another matter (i.e. close of business day timing, normal delays involved in new account enrollment, and so on). EDIT: To be clear I'm not throwing Griddy under the bus for sending email late or without more time. I think they were doing what they could for their customers upon seeing the wholesale prices skyrocket. But the reality is that it takes time to switch services even under normal conditions, without thousands of others trying to do the same.
  - gregw2 6y ago
    I heard on the news here in Texas that reporters indicated it takes a few days to switch, so while Griddy sent the email, their customers were not able to really act on the advice amidst the crisis. That said, I think it was bad advice from Griddy for a second reason. I think they should have told their customers to just go to their house fuse box and shut off their power to avoid the inevitable huge bill. I'm not sure why others haven't mentioned this but the customers did ultimately have that recourse. This is the unfortunate but logical thing to do when your 6c/kWh bill grows to $9/kWh. And at least you can intermittently turn it back on when needed to heat your house for a short bit, etc which is still better than being totally out for 3 days as many people here were.
    - curryst 6y ago
      I think maybe they assumed people knew that. I would have assumed people knew that; have people never blown a fuse? Also, several people froze to death. It's a massive liability to tell people to shut their power off when it's below freezing; you could face civil liabilities. And you can't disconnect someone during freezing temperatures. I don't know whether a provider telling you to disconnect yourself would go over super well.
      - gregw2 6y ago
        good point regarding liabilities
giantg2 6y ago
Some states allow fixed contract prices. Not sure if TX does or not. Edit: Not sure why I'm downvoted. I'm just saying some places allow consumers to buy a fixed rate plan. The parent comment was asking about how the process has varied in the past and I was pointing out that some people might be protected via a fixed rate contract.
- techsupporter 6y ago
  The overwhelming majority of retail electric plans in Texas are fixed or nearly-fixed rate. By "nearly," I mean the rate changes by bands based on time (e.g. power you use after 10pm is $0.05/kWh where power you use between 12pm and 4pm is $0.21/kWh). Some plans are so-called variable rate where the per-kWh rate you pay changes per month based on the price of natural gas. But an increasing majority are these time-of-use, rates-can-move plans, of which Griddy's is the logical extreme.
techsupporter 6y ago
1. Time-of-use plans have an app or web portal into which a customer can log into. (Actually, most providers in Texas these days have a real-time portal customers can use simply because smart metering enables it.) 2. Yep, my parents were, and they will never use a time-of-use plan ever again. 3. No. I made a spreadsheet and, based on my math their being bit by this in mid-2019 would have not paid off prior to this event. Circling back to 2 for a moment, the problem is not so much with the plans, it is with all of the unmet caveats that the author lists in the article. For my parents, they were pitched this plan on a visit to the State Fair of Texas where the salesperson told them they could "save thousands of dollars" every year by not "lining the pockets of big energy." Sure, they know how Griddy operates now, but what about some new clever scheme another provider comes up with that winds up biting them? That's why they're on fixed-rate plans forever. Not a single person told them the downsides of this plan, the virtually-unlimited (sorry, but a $9/kWh cap when wholesale electricity is usually $0.02-$0.04/kWh and retail is around $0.115/kWh, is not a cap) cost exposure, and the near-impossibility of taking effective action (it is unreasonable to tell customers to go outside and hit the main breaker in a winter storm). Texas came up with a system where retail electric customers are willingly offered plans in which they need to be near-experts in the price of natural gas derivatives and spot-generation electrical wholesale rates...and are not told in advance about this requirement.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  Yeah, that's kind of ridiculous. Like picking pennies up in front of a steamroller. Granted, if the cost savings were enough, a homeowner could install a battery/genset backup with the savings and have that automatically switch over when prices got nuts, but that's not within the abilities or even mindset of most people.
  - masklinn 6y ago
    > Granted, if the cost savings were enough They probably are enough over long periods, or retailers wouldn't be profitable. However that assumes you hedge properly. If you treat your savings from "good times" as extra cash to spend you're going to get burned to the ground by the bad times. It also means you have to be extremely reactive, now you need a setup to quickly cutoff electricity if wholesale prices skyrocket, and you need to be on the ball checking wholesale prices like a whale checks their gasha.
kasey_junk 6y ago
I’m not in Texas and not on Gridly but am on a time of use plan. I am subscribed to text messages when prices go up and they provide a website with the time of use pricing.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  What do you do if you're away from home one day, and you get a text message that electricity prices have increased 100x? Can you cut power to your house?
  - kasey_junk 6y ago
    I suppose I’d have to call a neighbor. But the vast majority of my energy costs happen when I’m home in the form of ac & appliance use. The text is triggered if retail rates go above 14c per kWh for more than 30 minutes. That’s about 7x our normal peak rate. Last week saw the highest prices I’ve seen going up to 40c at one point. I’ll also note that I’m on budget billing which normalizes monthly fluctuations. No idea what the agreement is in the case of one of these tail events but I suspect it involves lots of publicity and regulators.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Step 1 would likely be to use your smartphone app to set your Internet enabled thermostat down to its lowest setting, probably 55F. High enough that the pipes don't freeze, but low enough to save energy. Probably not cooking anything either unless you have a gas grill. Definitely not plugging in the electric car. If this happens during the middle of summer then you turn the A/C off and hope the house can coast for the rest of the day without melting anything. At least in the summer you can grill outside. But honestly, it boggles my mind that anybody would opt for these sorts of power plans with effectively unlimited downside and fairly marginal upside. Who wants this kind of stress in their life? Doesn't Texas already have pretty cheap power thanks to all of the wind and deregulation? Isn't that why they are in this mess in the first plate?
    - kasey_junk 6y ago
nickysielicki 6y ago
Former griddy customer, unaffected by recent events as I'm not in Texas anymore. > what is your visibility into current prices for electricity? Very good price visibility. Phone notifications are great. Not only will they notify when it's high and you need to reduce consumption, but also when it's low -- meaning you can consume cheaply, and often they'll send out forecast notifications a day in advance, saying that prices are projected to be high (or projected to be low) the following day. It allows you to plan consumption easily. > Have you been bitten by unexpected high prices before, perhaps in the summer? Prior to this event, would you say you saved money overall with Griddy? I definitely saved money with Griddy, and if I moved back to Texas I wouldn't hesitate to sign back up with Griddy again.
gregw2 6y ago
A coworker of mine used Griddy before this event for about a year, but left it 6-9 months ago. To answer your question 2/3, when I tried to congratulate him on getting out of it before the storm, he was still pretty down on it. He's an analytical type but his conclusion was that he lost $600 by being on it and wished he'd left it sooner. When I looked around in Texas for power, my findings were that A) pricing averaged about 11cents/kWh, but if you looked to find the best rates, you could get about 6 cents/kWh. Which, post-storm, seems not that different from the wholesale rates with no tail risk.

by jerf 6y ago

egwor 6y ago

To 1.: didn't one provider email their client base to warn them of this?

kingaillas 6y ago
Yes that was Griddy that emailed their client base. Whether or not they did it and gave their customers sufficient time to do the switch is another matter (i.e. close of business day timing, normal delays involved in new account enrollment, and so on). EDIT: To be clear I'm not throwing Griddy under the bus for sending email late or without more time. I think they were doing what they could for their customers upon seeing the wholesale prices skyrocket. But the reality is that it takes time to switch services even under normal conditions, without thousands of others trying to do the same.
- gregw2 6y ago
  I heard on the news here in Texas that reporters indicated it takes a few days to switch, so while Griddy sent the email, their customers were not able to really act on the advice amidst the crisis. That said, I think it was bad advice from Griddy for a second reason. I think they should have told their customers to just go to their house fuse box and shut off their power to avoid the inevitable huge bill. I'm not sure why others haven't mentioned this but the customers did ultimately have that recourse. This is the unfortunate but logical thing to do when your 6c/kWh bill grows to $9/kWh. And at least you can intermittently turn it back on when needed to heat your house for a short bit, etc which is still better than being totally out for 3 days as many people here were.
  - curryst 6y ago
    I think maybe they assumed people knew that. I would have assumed people knew that; have people never blown a fuse? Also, several people froze to death. It's a massive liability to tell people to shut their power off when it's below freezing; you could face civil liabilities. And you can't disconnect someone during freezing temperatures. I don't know whether a provider telling you to disconnect yourself would go over super well.
    - gregw2 6y ago
      good point regarding liabilities

giantg2 6y ago

Some states allow fixed contract prices. Not sure if TX does or not. Edit: Not sure why I'm downvoted. I'm just saying some places allow consumers to buy a fixed rate plan. The parent comment was asking about how the process has varied in the past and I was pointing out that some people might be protected via a fixed rate contract.

techsupporter 6y ago
The overwhelming majority of retail electric plans in Texas are fixed or nearly-fixed rate. By "nearly," I mean the rate changes by bands based on time (e.g. power you use after 10pm is $0.05/kWh where power you use between 12pm and 4pm is $0.21/kWh). Some plans are so-called variable rate where the per-kWh rate you pay changes per month based on the price of natural gas. But an increasing majority are these time-of-use, rates-can-move plans, of which Griddy's is the logical extreme.

techsupporter 6y ago

1. Time-of-use plans have an app or web portal into which a customer can log into. (Actually, most providers in Texas these days have a real-time portal customers can use simply because smart metering enables it.) 2. Yep, my parents were, and they will never use a time-of-use plan ever again. 3. No. I made a spreadsheet and, based on my math their being bit by this in mid-2019 would have not paid off prior to this event. Circling back to 2 for a moment, the problem is not so much with the plans, it is with all of the unmet caveats that the author lists in the article. For my parents, they were pitched this plan on a visit to the State Fair of Texas where the salesperson told them they could "save thousands of dollars" every year by not "lining the pockets of big energy." Sure, they know how Griddy operates now, but what about some new clever scheme another provider comes up with that winds up biting them? That's why they're on fixed-rate plans forever. Not a single person told them the downsides of this plan, the virtually-unlimited (sorry, but a $9/kWh cap when wholesale electricity is usually $0.02-$0.04/kWh and retail is around $0.115/kWh, is not a cap) cost exposure, and the near-impossibility of taking effective action (it is unreasonable to tell customers to go outside and hit the main breaker in a winter storm). Texas came up with a system where retail electric customers are willingly offered plans in which they need to be near-experts in the price of natural gas derivatives and spot-generation electrical wholesale rates...and are not told in advance about this requirement.

omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
Yeah, that's kind of ridiculous. Like picking pennies up in front of a steamroller. Granted, if the cost savings were enough, a homeowner could install a battery/genset backup with the savings and have that automatically switch over when prices got nuts, but that's not within the abilities or even mindset of most people.
- masklinn 6y ago
  > Granted, if the cost savings were enough They probably are enough over long periods, or retailers wouldn't be profitable. However that assumes you hedge properly. If you treat your savings from "good times" as extra cash to spend you're going to get burned to the ground by the bad times. It also means you have to be extremely reactive, now you need a setup to quickly cutoff electricity if wholesale prices skyrocket, and you need to be on the ball checking wholesale prices like a whale checks their gasha.

kasey_junk 6y ago

I’m not in Texas and not on Gridly but am on a time of use plan. I am subscribed to text messages when prices go up and they provide a website with the time of use pricing.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
What do you do if you're away from home one day, and you get a text message that electricity prices have increased 100x? Can you cut power to your house?
- kasey_junk 6y ago
  I suppose I’d have to call a neighbor. But the vast majority of my energy costs happen when I’m home in the form of ac & appliance use. The text is triggered if retail rates go above 14c per kWh for more than 30 minutes. That’s about 7x our normal peak rate. Last week saw the highest prices I’ve seen going up to 40c at one point. I’ll also note that I’m on budget billing which normalizes monthly fluctuations. No idea what the agreement is in the case of one of these tail events but I suspect it involves lots of publicity and regulators.
- jandrese 6y ago
  Step 1 would likely be to use your smartphone app to set your Internet enabled thermostat down to its lowest setting, probably 55F. High enough that the pipes don't freeze, but low enough to save energy. Probably not cooking anything either unless you have a gas grill. Definitely not plugging in the electric car. If this happens during the middle of summer then you turn the A/C off and hope the house can coast for the rest of the day without melting anything. At least in the summer you can grill outside. But honestly, it boggles my mind that anybody would opt for these sorts of power plans with effectively unlimited downside and fairly marginal upside. Who wants this kind of stress in their life? Doesn't Texas already have pretty cheap power thanks to all of the wind and deregulation? Isn't that why they are in this mess in the first plate?
  - kasey_junk 6y ago

nickysielicki 6y ago

Former griddy customer, unaffected by recent events as I'm not in Texas anymore. > what is your visibility into current prices for electricity? Very good price visibility. Phone notifications are great. Not only will they notify when it's high and you need to reduce consumption, but also when it's low -- meaning you can consume cheaply, and often they'll send out forecast notifications a day in advance, saying that prices are projected to be high (or projected to be low) the following day. It allows you to plan consumption easily. > Have you been bitten by unexpected high prices before, perhaps in the summer? Prior to this event, would you say you saved money overall with Griddy? I definitely saved money with Griddy, and if I moved back to Texas I wouldn't hesitate to sign back up with Griddy again.

gregw2 6y ago

A coworker of mine used Griddy before this event for about a year, but left it 6-9 months ago. To answer your question 2/3, when I tried to congratulate him on getting out of it before the storm, he was still pretty down on it. He's an analytical type but his conclusion was that he lost $600 by being on it and wished he'd left it sooner. When I looked around in Texas for power, my findings were that A) pricing averaged about 11cents/kWh, but if you looked to find the best rates, you could get about 6 cents/kWh. Which, post-storm, seems not that different from the wholesale rates with no tail risk.