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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.
fulafel 3y ago
Regulation can ensure there's less risk of abrupt shortfalls and price spikes (eg mandating headroom for peak production, or usage rationing). Record heat waves aren't exceptional now.

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.

fulafel 3y ago

Regulation can ensure there's less risk of abrupt shortfalls and price spikes (eg mandating headroom for peak production, or usage rationing). Record heat waves aren't exceptional now.