5 ms·

oh my lord, what is this thinking. People have enough shit to be worried about than to worry about their power ticker going up and down. This is not something

oh my lord, what is this thinking. People have enough shit to be worried about than to worry about their power ticker going up and down. This is not something we should add as a burden to our citizens. Next I'm going to hear people wanting to short electricity.

Robotbeat 6y ago
I mean, there is a valid point of reducing the mental load, but the alternative is paying significantly more for electricity (and producing more greenhouse gases). Particularly as we rely more and more on non-dispatchable renewable power sources.
wmf 6y ago
Shorting electricity? Hear me out, it's like Robinhood for Enron.
- tedunangst 6y ago
  There should be a tie in with nextdoor so you can outbid your neighbor for their electricity.
- Nemo_bis 6y ago
  See Matt Levine: > The people signing contracts to buy Texas electricity at wholesale prices were doing so to economize. In some theoretical sense they accepted higher price volatility in exchange for usually lower prices, but in a much more practical sense they wanted the usually lower prices and couldn’t afford the higher price volatility. And then when prices rose they were wiped out. > But the Griddy stories suggest that there’s something to it. It turns out to be really easy to accidentally engage in risky financial speculation, to somehow make disastrous bets on spot power markets in your monthly utility bill because it’s simple to sign up. If life is a constant series of high-stakes financial gambles anyway, perhaps it is tempting to choose some of your gambles on purpose. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electric-bills-are-a-gamble-too https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electr...
  - salawat 6y ago
    The Internet, and tech in particular, has completely changed the business sphere by throwing out that whole "meeting of the minds" concept that was taken for necessary in any contractual relationship. In the past, one could count on their hands and feet the number of contracts that one would enter into over one's life. Now? There's so much churn that the act of accepting is more a ritual or formality. One that sadly has the capability to take advantage of a lot of people due to information asymmetry.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > In the past, one could count on their hands and feet the number of contracts that one would enter into over one's life. More recently - and still IMO OK - maybe you entered into more than 20 contracts in your life, but you were unlikely to have 20 contracts ongoing simultaneously. Today? I don't even know how many contracts or pseudo-contracts I'm involved in, but its in dozens. That's my biggest reason I started to avoid SaaS and subscriptions as much as I can. Because every service you subscribe to is a relationship you enter, that you now have to manage, keep in mind. These add up quickly.
  - AniseAbyss 6y ago
    Lets be real when you are poor you're trying to make it through the month on your paycheck.
    - Nemo_bis 6y ago
      So maybe you shouldn't sell high-risk financial products to poor people under the guise of an electricity contract.
      - supertrope 6y ago
        This is America. We make the sick and injured pay thousands of dollars through the innovation of high deductible health insurance (sometimes upfront!)
  - 6y ago
- airhead969 6y ago
  Better put a fuse or GFCI on that. I remember the Cal ISO rolling blackouts of 2000-2001.
panta82 6y ago
Exactly. Electricity should be something that just exists, as an ambiance around you. That you pay a predictable, modest monthly bill, and can than focus on other things. Who needs the drama of free markets there? Also applies to net neutrality and health-care btw.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  The electricity price is not low if you use it without consideration of cost. Why bother with LED lights, heat-pumps, or proper insulation if you’re totally insensitive to the cost of electricity? What happens in such situations is electricity ends up being rationed with rolling blackouts. Or, if you manage to produce enough anyway by massive government investment, per capita energy usage skyrockets. The former situation happens in developing countries and the latter in oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia which heavily subsidize electricity costs so it ends up being cheaper to just run the A/C at full blast constantly instead of properly insulating your household. But most people don’t care about climate change, so maybe that’s the direction things would go.
  - airhead969 6y ago
    I think it depends on how much it costs and the environmental impact of energy generation and transmission. There's a continuum between austerity taxing a resource for insane frugality, moderate pricing, and giving it away that has to be deliberately comsidered.
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      Moderate pricing is the right move. But a lot of folks are missing my main point here: The more people and businesses are on fixed rates, the more inelastic demand is and therefore the more extreme the pricing swings are for those who are on moderate real-time pricing plans. We need to make real-time pricing as broad as possible so the price extremes are much smaller. and make it more feasible for small players (including middle class individuals) to contribute directly to supply.
sephamorr 6y ago
'People' can simply choose a different electricity retailer if they want a constant rate and to not worry about this. If they were adequately informed about risks, why shouldn't we be allowed to choose our path? Industrial customers usually buy on the wholesale market, it doesn't seem a stretch that consumers could benefit from that too.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > If they were adequately informed about risks, why shouldn't we be allowed to choose our path? That's a big if. In reality, they won't be adequately informed - they'll be at best adequately disinformed by the marketing departments of the power companies and third parties popping up around variable-pricing schemes. And to the extent exposing the customers to price variability is beneficial for the suppliers, the market has a nice way of removing the previously available options from the choice pool. There's a spectrum between "let the people decide for themselves" and "the people will predictably decide to do something stupid and then they'll beg to be bailed out, so perhaps let's not offer that option", and I feel this may fall closer to that second end.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    If I do something stupid, why should I be bailed out? That takes away a key feedback mechanism. Heads you win; tails someone else loses; how much would you like to wager?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Because if you lose enough, you start dragging your family or community down. If enough people lose enough, they turn into a humanitarian crisis. People are social creatures, and want to help each other, and set up systems that do so - which then get unintentionally exploited by risk takers. So a bunch of people do something obviously stupid - like getting scammed by a tech support call, or get infinite debt on a payday loan, or put a hand in a moving machinery and lose it. Now they're there, scammed, without money, and/or a hand. What are you going to do? Deny them healthcare and basic support? No, we help them anyway, and instead chase scammers, put limits on payday loans, and enforce safety requirements on equipment - we take away the choice of being stupid, because that's more reasonable than being indifferent to the suffering of victims of their own stupidity, for the sake of enforcing a corrective feedback loop.

Robotbeat 6y ago

I mean, there is a valid point of reducing the mental load, but the alternative is paying significantly more for electricity (and producing more greenhouse gases). Particularly as we rely more and more on non-dispatchable renewable power sources.

wmf 6y ago

Shorting electricity? Hear me out, it's like Robinhood for Enron.

tedunangst 6y ago
There should be a tie in with nextdoor so you can outbid your neighbor for their electricity.
Nemo_bis 6y ago
See Matt Levine: > The people signing contracts to buy Texas electricity at wholesale prices were doing so to economize. In some theoretical sense they accepted higher price volatility in exchange for usually lower prices, but in a much more practical sense they wanted the usually lower prices and couldn’t afford the higher price volatility. And then when prices rose they were wiped out. > But the Griddy stories suggest that there’s something to it. It turns out to be really easy to accidentally engage in risky financial speculation, to somehow make disastrous bets on spot power markets in your monthly utility bill because it’s simple to sign up. If life is a constant series of high-stakes financial gambles anyway, perhaps it is tempting to choose some of your gambles on purpose. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electric-bills-are-a-gamble-too https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-22/electr...
- salawat 6y ago
  The Internet, and tech in particular, has completely changed the business sphere by throwing out that whole "meeting of the minds" concept that was taken for necessary in any contractual relationship. In the past, one could count on their hands and feet the number of contracts that one would enter into over one's life. Now? There's so much churn that the act of accepting is more a ritual or formality. One that sadly has the capability to take advantage of a lot of people due to information asymmetry.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > In the past, one could count on their hands and feet the number of contracts that one would enter into over one's life. More recently - and still IMO OK - maybe you entered into more than 20 contracts in your life, but you were unlikely to have 20 contracts ongoing simultaneously. Today? I don't even know how many contracts or pseudo-contracts I'm involved in, but its in dozens. That's my biggest reason I started to avoid SaaS and subscriptions as much as I can. Because every service you subscribe to is a relationship you enter, that you now have to manage, keep in mind. These add up quickly.
- AniseAbyss 6y ago
  Lets be real when you are poor you're trying to make it through the month on your paycheck.
  - Nemo_bis 6y ago
    So maybe you shouldn't sell high-risk financial products to poor people under the guise of an electricity contract.
    - supertrope 6y ago
      This is America. We make the sick and injured pay thousands of dollars through the innovation of high deductible health insurance (sometimes upfront!)
- 6y ago
airhead969 6y ago
Better put a fuse or GFCI on that. I remember the Cal ISO rolling blackouts of 2000-2001.

panta82 6y ago

Exactly. Electricity should be something that just exists, as an ambiance around you. That you pay a predictable, modest monthly bill, and can than focus on other things. Who needs the drama of free markets there? Also applies to net neutrality and health-care btw.

Robotbeat 6y ago
The electricity price is not low if you use it without consideration of cost. Why bother with LED lights, heat-pumps, or proper insulation if you’re totally insensitive to the cost of electricity? What happens in such situations is electricity ends up being rationed with rolling blackouts. Or, if you manage to produce enough anyway by massive government investment, per capita energy usage skyrockets. The former situation happens in developing countries and the latter in oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia which heavily subsidize electricity costs so it ends up being cheaper to just run the A/C at full blast constantly instead of properly insulating your household. But most people don’t care about climate change, so maybe that’s the direction things would go.
- airhead969 6y ago
  I think it depends on how much it costs and the environmental impact of energy generation and transmission. There's a continuum between austerity taxing a resource for insane frugality, moderate pricing, and giving it away that has to be deliberately comsidered.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    Moderate pricing is the right move. But a lot of folks are missing my main point here: The more people and businesses are on fixed rates, the more inelastic demand is and therefore the more extreme the pricing swings are for those who are on moderate real-time pricing plans. We need to make real-time pricing as broad as possible so the price extremes are much smaller. and make it more feasible for small players (including middle class individuals) to contribute directly to supply.

sephamorr 6y ago

'People' can simply choose a different electricity retailer if they want a constant rate and to not worry about this. If they were adequately informed about risks, why shouldn't we be allowed to choose our path? Industrial customers usually buy on the wholesale market, it doesn't seem a stretch that consumers could benefit from that too.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> If they were adequately informed about risks, why shouldn't we be allowed to choose our path? That's a big if. In reality, they won't be adequately informed - they'll be at best adequately disinformed by the marketing departments of the power companies and third parties popping up around variable-pricing schemes. And to the extent exposing the customers to price variability is beneficial for the suppliers, the market has a nice way of removing the previously available options from the choice pool. There's a spectrum between "let the people decide for themselves" and "the people will predictably decide to do something stupid and then they'll beg to be bailed out, so perhaps let's not offer that option", and I feel this may fall closer to that second end.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  If I do something stupid, why should I be bailed out? That takes away a key feedback mechanism. Heads you win; tails someone else loses; how much would you like to wager?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Because if you lose enough, you start dragging your family or community down. If enough people lose enough, they turn into a humanitarian crisis. People are social creatures, and want to help each other, and set up systems that do so - which then get unintentionally exploited by risk takers. So a bunch of people do something obviously stupid - like getting scammed by a tech support call, or get infinite debt on a payday loan, or put a hand in a moving machinery and lose it. Now they're there, scammed, without money, and/or a hand. What are you going to do? Deny them healthcare and basic support? No, we help them anyway, and instead chase scammers, put limits on payday loans, and enforce safety requirements on equipment - we take away the choice of being stupid, because that's more reasonable than being indifferent to the suffering of victims of their own stupidity, for the sake of enforcing a corrective feedback loop.