Whenever they have a spike in demand, the de-regulated prices go up by several hundred percent. Example
Just like to point out that Jerry Jones (the owner of the Dallas Cowboys) made almost $1 Billion, with a B, during the big freeze because he owns the natural gas fields and his good budy Governor Abbot said that wholesalers must sell for the max amount as allowed by law during that time, basically legalizing price gouging.
If it’s Republicans, it’s legal.
That’s some next level owning the libs.
I’m certainly feeling owned right now. Ouch!
Most of us don’t pay the market price hour to hour. Our electricity provider absorbs the risk of price spikes and raises our rates if the math stops working for them.
Griddy was a provider that sells at the market rate, which is usually below the general price you would pay, but you take the risk of price spikes during peak demand.
I’ve done lots of tech projects within the retail energy industry in Texas - this is the right answer.
To expand a little bit:
Retail energy providers (REPs), like NRG, ClearSky, Just Energy, etc. make their money by forecasting the amount of energy that will be needed as far in advance as possible and purchasing that amount from power generators like CenterPoint and marking it up a few cents. The farther out, the cheaper they can get it. I’ve helped build forecasting engines for a few that ingest historical usage data from meters (all meters in Texas are smart meters), weather data, and others to use machine learning to forecast how much individuals will need and aggregate it together to help the energy traders make better informed trade decisions farther out.
If they mess up or an unforeseen event happens and they don’t have enough energy bought for that time segment (forgot the term for a window of time they use), they have to go to the spot market which is where the prices fluctuate and can be many many multitudes higher than the rate the customers are contracted to pay.
In a storm scenario or a freeze, it can be thousands of times more expensive because demand is so high and supply is so limited. This is when REPs go bankrupt if they don’t have the cash on hand.
There are also insurance plans that the REPs pay for that cover very specific conditions for different types of events or outages that can kick in to cover the huge costs they would otherwise incur on their own buying electricity at that spot rate. I’ve known a few that were only able to stay operating because someone a few years prior had bought an insurance policy that covered said weather event.
Griddy died because of the ice storm in Texas a few years ago and the huge costs people incurred. I actually met with their CIO the year prior as part of a technology assessment of their stack. Nice guy.
Edit: also you can largely thank Enron and Rick Perry for deregulating Texas’ energy - which directly led to the terrible “performance” of the Texas grid during the winter storm Uri in 2021. Same for Enron in the constant blackouts in California in the early 2000’s.
Griddy
Thank you! So much misinformation floating around, its ridiculous.
They don’t
I thank my lucky stars to be in San Antonio where we have municipal power.
People complain about CPS (city public service) but we get a say in how the company is run and our bills are quite reasonable compared to the state average.
That’s the neat thing! They don’t.
What’s so neat about it?
sarcasm
Maybe it depends on your energy provider and whether you have a fixed rate or variable rate plan? I don’t know if other places have those options or not. Check out powertochoes.org if you don’t know what I mean. Mine just went up from $200 to $300 this month with the heat. My highest is usually 1-2 months of ~$350.
We have contracts like everyone else. No one pays the day by day rate.
Then what’s the point in having a day by day rate?
It’s the same reason why the fed controls interest rates. Entities higher up the chain deal with those volatile costs so we don’t have to.
Because that’s what the electric company is paying, and if it stays high our contracts go up next year
Vote. Shit won’t change if you don’t make yourself heard.
True! But Texan dems do vote, despite knowing that as long as a conservative is governor, the election actually will be rigged. In Texas, state elections are under the complete control of a conservative governor, as he appoints a loyal Secretary of State to handle his elections.
Are elections in Texas handled with transparency and honesty? Awwe heeelllllll no. They are handled the way you’d expect a conservative to run an election. With secrecy and a creepy little conservative grin. “Oh, you were so close y’all! Oh, well. Better luck next time!”
While I agree that Texans need to continue voting, it seems pretty obvious to me that pacifist methods cannot yield change against conservatism. Voting in Texas is like voting under Putin. Voting is good, but it’s not what is going to cause a regime change. Only severe and widespread action can have any effect against the deadly cancer of conservatism.
We were only 600,000 votes away from a Biden victory in 2020 because we didn’t have enough voters. TX has pitiful voter turnout, even with 2 weeks if open polls, with polls required to be open at least 12 hours a day on the weekday.
In 2020, even with what’s called amazing turnout, with a voting age population of 21.5 million, 17 million were registered, and 11.3 million cast a vote. Then in 2022, when we had the entire legislative branch, almost all of the executive branch, and a good chunk of the judicial branch up for election, only 8.1 million people voted.
Even with these numbers, Biden still received more votes in TX than he did in NY! There’s potential for us to get some better representation, if we can just get more people to get to a polling station (usually open 7AM-7PM during the second week of voting).
We need more people to turnout this year, not only to keep Trump from our electoral college votes, but to kick Ted Cruz to the curb. There is a lot in the news pushing people away from the pills and making people mad at the DNC just like in 2016 and its really scary because those tactics helped keep people from casting their vote.
Turnout number source https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/historical/70-92.shtml
Your source is not reliable at all. Your source is the Texas Secretary of State who is appointed directly by Gov. Abbott. He and his minions are notoriously dishonest and are not reliable sources of any information.
Your source is one of the many places Gov. Abbott tells TX Dems “ohhh… So close, y’all! Better luck next time.”
If you don’t believe the official counts, than where would you go for a source?
Anywhere but the scene of the crime! Are you kidding? Why on earth would you ask Abbott why election results are so inconsitent with polling data? Abbott, a known serial liar, is responsible for all the secrecy, shady vendor dealings and lack of transparency in our state elections. You should not just take his word for it.
I live in Finland and me like a large number of other Finns have a plan in which the price changes every hour according to the market price. Typical price for electricity is around 4c/kWh in the summer and around 15c/kWh in the winter. However it’s not uncommon at all for the price to spike into 30c/kWh or even 70c/kWh. Last winter there was a day that it spiked to 200c/kWh.
How do we deal with it? By turning down/off the heating if possible and burning wood instead. If not then you just deal with it and have to pay significantly more for a few months. Then again if your plan has a fixed price to like 10c/kWh then that also mean you’re paying that even when the price drops to zero which also is not uncommon at all. Often happens several times a week during the summer time. Sometimes it even goes into negative. It’s still not literally free though since the transfer cost is around 6c/kWh plus energy fee and taxes.
How do you keep up with the current price? Does your thermostat have a setting where if the price is above X then turn off? Do you just come home to a freezing house and say “oh the electric is too expensive, guess I’ll grab some wood”?
I check sahko.tk in the evenings to see if it’s going to be particularly expensive the next day. This is mostly in the winter time, at summer I hardly pay any attention to it. They usually warn people in the news too for the handful of really expensive days in a year. Depending how high it gets I might turn off the heating for the peak hours but generally not because it doesn’t really make that of a big difference as the prices average out over a long period of time. Some people have automatic thermostats that turn off the heating after the electricity price passes a certain limit. My water heater for example is set to go on during the night when electricity is at its cheapest.
Are the predicted prices ever crazy far off from what they actually end up being like what happened in Texas last winter? Where am outage causes price to go from like 20c/khw to 2000c/khw over a one hour period?
No, the prices are decided about 24 hours in advance and they don’t change after that.
So it costs you more when it costs more to produce, but when it’s free to produce it still costs you money.
Love corporations
No… First of all: electricity is never free to produce. Running a powerplant costs the same no matter what price the electricity is at. The price goes to zero when supply greatly overceeds demand. That means I’m not paying to the electric company for the electricity but I’m still paying for the company that maintains the grid to deliver that electricity to me. It doesn’t just magically hop from the powerplant to my house.
They pay their savings directly into the pockets of bought politicians and corrupt energy execs.
By living in an area that has a regulated utility provider. One of the primary requirements I have when choosing a place to live is to make sure the utility provider in the area is a regulated entity.
I find it highly unlikely that a human being is deciding their living situation based on whether or not their utility provider is regulated.
Well I did, so shrug I guess I’m an outlier. My home search was very limited to one county so I could make sure we were covered by that city’s resources. Besides, I didn’t say it had to be the only reason. Just answering OPs question on how people live with those private unregulated utilities, which I did by avoiding them altogether.
Power companies average things out.
Now some customers specifically ask to pay the instantaneous price, and those people just turn things off. This has the advantage that you end up paying less during times if low demand.
I’d be shocked that anyone puts up with this, but then I remember how the healthcare system “works.”
Hopefully getting their own solar panels
I hear you, but a solar set up with batteries for a house in TX is often well over $100K. It’s not easy for most of us to pull that off, even with financing. And it’s not an option at all for renters.
Thats not gonna be the minimum, its a sliding scale of how much solar you can afford.
When you include enough battery storage to keep your HVAC working without interruption, the price becomes extremely high. I was not able to find anything less than about $100k installed here that could cool a 1500-2000 sqft house for a half day.
Crazy thing about AC, its power draw lines up perfectly with solar production, you dont need much storage to run it.
That is simply not accurate in south Texas. It’s 90 degrees at midnight with 80% humidity. You need a great deal of storage.
Also, the system needs to over-produce and store that excess energy during the day so you can continue to run all night. If there is heavy cloud cover, you will also be relying on that storage during the day as well.
Im seeing lows in the 70s. If theres heavy cloud cover you wont need as much AC. Texas summers are ideal solar scenario
Where?! Austin?! Haha. Just stop. Our lows are in the high 80’s on a good day in the summer! Usually, that low happens at 4 am and is only that temp for an hour or two. At midnight, the temp is usually about 90. Also, humidity is extremely high, making our temps much more deadly. So, just stop. You definitely, definitely do not know what you are talking about.
Also, you can’t just turn off your AC when there’s cloud cover and easily get your house cooled back down when the sun comes back out, as you are implying. It takes a great deal of energy and an over-powered HVAC system (which no one has) to cool a house quickly when the sun is out.
I’m not sure what you are doing right now. Is your goal to try to convince me, a resident of this place who has tried for years to afford a solar system, to embrace a solar solution? I already want one. If you know of a vendor in south Texas that can install what’s needed to keep me and my family alive when the power goes out for the low prices you claim, please let me know who they are and I will call them!
Until then, I will just have to make do with my Generac natural gas generator that can run everything when the power goes out. That solution only costs $15k installed. There’s a reason people get whole-home generators instead of off-grid solar here. That reason is very obviously price. One day I hope to afford a solar solution (panels/batteries/installation) that can keep everything running when we lose power for several days at a time, but as of today, that is at least a $100k investment for a 1500-2000 sqft home.
