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Griddy's take according to the article is that the per-kilowatt-hour price was set arbitrarily by a political appointee. If the price were set by real-time auc
by elihu 6y ago
Griddy's take according to the article is that the per-kilowatt-hour price was set arbitrarily by a political appointee. If the price were set by real-time auctions, that would be one thing, but if someone arbitrarily sets the price at $9 per kilowatt hour, it's not unreasonable that some people are going to be very angry about it.
- sandworm101 6y agoAuctions would only make sense if those buying the power participated. If i knew that turning on my computer would cost 100/hour i would keep it off. But if i have no idea what the current market price actually is, i cannot make a rational choice. These people had no idea what they were buying until the bill came in the mail/email. This is precicely the sort of area for consumer protection laws.
- gruez 6y ago> But if i have no idea what the current market price actually is, i cannot make a rational choice. It doesn't seem that hard to make an IOT electricity price display.
- saghm 6y agoIf you decided not to pay for the power when you saw the price was high, wouldn't it turn off? How would you know when the price was low enough to turn back on?
- gruez 6y agobatteries? amazon used to sell kindles with 3g connection, which had battery life of "up to 8 weeks". It's not too hard to imagine a similar device with battery life of a week at least. text alerts would also work.
- shalmanese 6y agoWhat happens if the cell towers are down? As can often happen during a power emergency.
- gruez 6y agoThe person can make their own decision. It's balmy outside and the cell connection cuts out? Probably a network issue or terrorist attack, neither of which should affect electricity prices. On the other hand if it's been unusually cold for the past week and it cuts out, you probably should keep an eye on your electricity usage. Although in extreme weather events it's usually the electricity that goes out first, not the cell connection, because the latter tends to have battery backups.
- wmf 6y agoThe price isn't transmitted over the power lines; you use an app to check prices over the Internet.
- cameldrv 6y agoGriddy has an app that shows the price, and they were sending out email alerts at least, maybe more -- I am not a customer of theirs. The price system could have actually led to a better outcome here. If all the electric customers in Texas knew about the huge price spike, and actionable information like "You have electric heat, so if you heat normally, it will cost you $3000/day", many would have turned down their thermostats to the absolute minimum tolerable level, some would have fired up generators, and some would have shut things down and stayed with someone else. If everyone had been faced with that choice, there probably would not have been a need for the blackouts at all, and the price would have come down to a high, but less outrageous level. As it was, the supply was constrained, and the demand was essentially inelastic, because people didn't have any real incentive to radically conserve, since they weren't paying the wholesale rates. Now that said, I'm not sure this is really a good idea after all. There are so many things that I'm supposed to be optimizing these days, I just don't have the bandwidth to think about all of them. I really am not interested in planning when I do the laundry or set the thermostat based on what is happening with the electrical grid. I'd much rather just pay somewhat of a premium for the grid to be overprovisioned like it used to be and not have to worry about any of this crap.
- elihu 6y agoI agree that utility bills without upper bounds is a thing that should be covered by consumer protection laws. My point was more that the $9 per kilowatt hour wasn't even set by extreme market conditions; rather, it was an arbitrary number that someone made up (if Griddy's take is accurate). Individual people wouldn't participate in a power auction; that's supposedly what Griddy does on their customer's behalf and just sends them a bill for whatever the costs were.
- gizmo686 6y agoIt is a number set by Texas law as the maximum price of electricity [0]. The arguement that the commision used to justify staying with the maximum price seems straightforward: > At various times today, energy prices across the system have been as low as approximately $1,200. The Commission believes this outcome is inconsistent with the fundamental design of the ERCOT market. Energy prices should reflect scarcity of the supply. If customer load is being shed, scarcity is at its maximum, and the market price for the energy needed to serve that load should also be at its highest. [0] Actually, there are 2 maximum prices, and $9/PWh is supposed to be the greater of them. Due to the high price of natural gas, the "lower" maximum turned out to be more expensive, to the commission waved the rule that would have switch to using the other maximum.
- wmf 6y agoIf the free market had been allowed to do its work the price would have been even higher than $9,000.