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That's painful, feel bad for folks having to deal with that. This is why regulated utilities are important. A bit concerned about this website though. Appears

That's painful, feel bad for folks having to deal with that. This is why regulated utilities are important. A bit concerned about this website though. Appears to be a despair-themed blog focused on convincing people we're doomed instead of talking about how to make things better. Feels a bit like a disenfranchisement campaign at worst, and obnoxious clickbait at best.

Aloha 3y ago
I dont think anyone but bulk power purchasers will notice, tbh
- thephyber 3y ago
  The unique feature of the Texas deregulated grid is that lots of end user products expose consumers to dynamic pricing. There will be lots of households that are exposed to these extreme price swings.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    It's near impossible to sign up for a dynamic pricing like Griddy anymore. Practically nobody is on it. Even back in the Griddy heyday it was like ~5%~ 0.3% of consumers on those kinds of plans.
  - DannyBee 3y ago
    They banned consumer plans that bill at wholesale rates in 2021 after the last time spikes caused massive power bills. https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB16/2021 https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB16/2021
    - thephyber 3y ago
      Interesting. I didn’t know about this update.
kortilla 3y ago
Regulated utilities cannot magic more generation into existence. Shortfalls are paid for with or without regulated utilities.
- GlickWick 3y ago
  Sure, but they're generally covered and not exposed to the consumer, at least not in the form of major spikes.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Consumers weren't exposed here. Nobody got their bills massively spiked from this.
    - DannyBee 3y ago
      Not anymore. Until 2021, consumers could choose providers who bill them at the wholesale rate, as weird as that is. As a result, the last time this happened, consumers were exposed: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-bills.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-b... Those plans are now banned, i believe.
      - vel0city 3y ago
        Some customers. Very, very, very, very few. Griddy had at its peak like 29,000 customers. There are >9M households in Texas. 29,000 / 9,000,000 = 0.0032. So like 0.3% of households in Texas were Griddy customers, by far the biggest provider of these spot market based plans. Its insane to me how blown out of proportion those stories were received by people outside of Texas. An extreme minority of people directly faced those kinds of massive bills. The real story was more like how were the co-ops and municipal power companies going to handle the bills they faced, which actually does impact a number of consumers down the line, but everyone focuses on a tiny handful of people that got $20k bills because they gambled on the market. But hey, as evidenced here tons of people outside of Texas really think that's how electricity works in Texas. People in this thread, that some massive chunk of households actually pay spot market rates. Which now its really pretty much 0%, as for regular household plans that style is illegal, so you'd have to do some weird tricks with the power company to get on some kind of spot plan in your home.
vel0city 3y ago
> feel bad for folks having to deal with that. Nobody is directly. People are almost always on fixed rate contracts. Those have been mostly trending down over the last year and are cheaper today than a few years ago in real dollars.
jlmorton 3y ago
This is the wholesale price of electricity. The distributors plan for price surges like this, and the retail price stays the same. Although, the Texas electricity market is deeply weird, and people can actually pick an electricity provider, and some let people pay a price based on the wholesale rate, but not many people do that.
- DannyBee 3y ago
  You can't have consumer plans that bill at wholesale rates anymore in texas. After the last time consumers were caught out, they banned it in HB16 in 2021: https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB16/2021 https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB16/2021
rayiner 3y ago
Texas utilities are regulated, in fairly similar ways to how the German electric market is regulated. Shortages can drive spot prices for electricity extremely high for short periods of time (over 700 euros per megawatt hour last august in Germany).

Aloha 3y ago

I dont think anyone but bulk power purchasers will notice, tbh

thephyber 3y ago
The unique feature of the Texas deregulated grid is that lots of end user products expose consumers to dynamic pricing. There will be lots of households that are exposed to these extreme price swings.
- vel0city 3y ago
  It's near impossible to sign up for a dynamic pricing like Griddy anymore. Practically nobody is on it. Even back in the Griddy heyday it was like ~5%~ 0.3% of consumers on those kinds of plans.
- DannyBee 3y ago
  They banned consumer plans that bill at wholesale rates in 2021 after the last time spikes caused massive power bills. https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB16/2021 https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB16/2021
  - thephyber 3y ago
    Interesting. I didn’t know about this update.

kortilla 3y ago

Regulated utilities cannot magic more generation into existence. Shortfalls are paid for with or without regulated utilities.

GlickWick 3y ago
Sure, but they're generally covered and not exposed to the consumer, at least not in the form of major spikes.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Consumers weren't exposed here. Nobody got their bills massively spiked from this.
  - DannyBee 3y ago
    Not anymore. Until 2021, consumers could choose providers who bill them at the wholesale rate, as weird as that is. As a result, the last time this happened, consumers were exposed: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-bills.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-b... Those plans are now banned, i believe.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Some customers. Very, very, very, very few. Griddy had at its peak like 29,000 customers. There are >9M households in Texas. 29,000 / 9,000,000 = 0.0032. So like 0.3% of households in Texas were Griddy customers, by far the biggest provider of these spot market based plans. Its insane to me how blown out of proportion those stories were received by people outside of Texas. An extreme minority of people directly faced those kinds of massive bills. The real story was more like how were the co-ops and municipal power companies going to handle the bills they faced, which actually does impact a number of consumers down the line, but everyone focuses on a tiny handful of people that got $20k bills because they gambled on the market. But hey, as evidenced here tons of people outside of Texas really think that's how electricity works in Texas. People in this thread, that some massive chunk of households actually pay spot market rates. Which now its really pretty much 0%, as for regular household plans that style is illegal, so you'd have to do some weird tricks with the power company to get on some kind of spot plan in your home.

vel0city 3y ago

> feel bad for folks having to deal with that. Nobody is directly. People are almost always on fixed rate contracts. Those have been mostly trending down over the last year and are cheaper today than a few years ago in real dollars.

jlmorton 3y ago

This is the wholesale price of electricity. The distributors plan for price surges like this, and the retail price stays the same. Although, the Texas electricity market is deeply weird, and people can actually pick an electricity provider, and some let people pay a price based on the wholesale rate, but not many people do that.

DannyBee 3y ago
You can't have consumer plans that bill at wholesale rates anymore in texas. After the last time consumers were caught out, they banned it in HB16 in 2021: https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB16/2021 https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB16/2021

rayiner 3y ago

Texas utilities are regulated, in fairly similar ways to how the German electric market is regulated. Shortages can drive spot prices for electricity extremely high for short periods of time (over 700 euros per megawatt hour last august in Germany).