It's worth clarifying that Griddy wasn't "charging" these rates in an effort to gouge, nor was this rate an active decision they made during the crisis. (You li

It's worth clarifying that Griddy wasn't "charging" these rates in an effort to gouge, nor was this rate an active decision they made during the crisis. (You likely know this; just providing context for casual readers.) Griddy charged a fixed monthly subscriber fee, and then passed through delivery charges, taxes/fees, and the 5-minute wholesale electric rate (IIUC, as set by the ercot market). These all came out of pre-paid customer deposits, generally backed by auto-pay when the account was below some amount. Griddy "charged" $9/kWh intermittently while demand was outstripping supply but the system was largely stable. This model was approved by the (de-)regulators. After the large-scale blackouts, the public utility commission pegged the rate to the regulatory cap in the market for a few days. This was ostensibly to ensure maximum incentive to bring all possible generation back online (though plausible, I personally suspect this ended up just being a reward to large operators who owned both plants that were part of the problem, and plants still online to rake in market-cap rates for several days.) Any retail power companies whose pockets weren't deep enough to stay solvent while paying ~200x normal wholesale rates for several days went under. In Griddy's case, bankruptcy was a step removed; these rates were passed through to customers via autopay until the transactions stopped clearing, either because the account was empty, or the customer removed the payment method. IIRC none of the providers were legally allowed to cut customers off during the emergency, so these turned into massive bills (though I think Griddy clarified pretty quickly that they wouldn't be pursuing anyone for these). Since Griddy was a pre-pay service, I doubt they had enough of a buffer to absorb these whole-sale costs without payment for long.