The 43-year-old owner of an organic skincare and apothecary shop was initially confused by the message from Griddy, which sells wholesale power for a monthly membership, but she began to look for other providers.
Then she checked her bill.
-Kent
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Message to the world from Texas electric problems: Frozen wind turbines and snowed-over solar panels produce no electricity; when the number of vehicles reaches a certain percentage of all vehicles, the supply of electricity available will not meet demand. Cars will stop, trucks will stop, cooling and heating of homes and businesses will stop. COVID hasn't caused anything like the problems when sustainable green energy takes hold.
ReplyDeleteWhat additional costs produce these spiking prices? Yeah, I get it overtime, repair parts, yadda yadda.
DeleteHow much of this horrendous jack-up in power costs is the result of power companies buying and selling to each other to raise the price like real estate flippers?
Electric power is a commodity, traded like a commodity, by commodity traders and speculators. Capice?
DeleteNo, electric power is not normally "a commodity traded like a commodity" at the retail level, it is a regulated utility. Griddy is a rare exception. It is normally only traded like a commodity at the wholesale level between utilities.
DeleteGriddy is designed for customers who can shed loads when market prices rise. Customers like datacenters who can switch to generator power with no interruption of service. Home users that chose Griddy because power prices are normally low are getting what they signed up for.
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ReplyDeleteOrganic skin care and apothecary? I thought I was watching Schitts Creek for a minute.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Ya gotta read the fine print and do your homework. Here is the money quote--
ReplyDelete"The amped-up wattage costs have affected Griddy customers in particular because of the company’s distinctive business model. In Texas’ hypercharged market for electricity, Griddy makes money by debiting its subscribers a flat $9.99 monthly fee—and then selling them raw power at its going wholesale value, effectively stripping out any insulation between consumers and the oscillations in supply and demand."
I am with Reliant power company. The plan I shopped for (in May of 2020) is $55/1000Kwh, prorated. Delivery (Oncor) and taxes add about $40. Plan is locked for three years.
Yep, I'm with Reliant too. Locked in for 5 years.
DeleteFor those interested, here is more detail--
Deletehttps://www.reliant.com/files/0901751882488471.pdf
Note the current date. Apparently this plan is still available. I printed a hard copy back when I was shopping. The date on that is 03/09/2020 and the plan went into effect in June. The averages at the top are 10.9 cents, 10.1 cents, and 9.6 cents. Delivery charge is 3.5448 cents/kWh. Everything else is the same.
Sounds like when Cal had their gas proces skyrocket due to speculation. Someone needs to go to jail. If I got a bill for $8k, I'd tell 'em to fuque off and buy a top-end generator system for less.
ReplyDeleteYahoo which is not news its a descriptive word for the type of people who write stories like that.
ReplyDeleteTrue, which made me wonder about the veracity of this story, so I grabbed this link and emailed it to a friend in Texas and asked her if this story is true.
DeleteShe said that it definitely is, but that it is actually against the law in Texas to engage in this type of insane price gouging, and that this will be dealt with.
Tim in AK
Everbody that got on those plans wanted to buy power at cheap prices KNOWING it was expensive if scarce. Now they don't think they should have to pay since it wasn't their fault prices went up. World is full of idiots.
ReplyDeleteLiving in DFW, that gave my heart a start for a minute. Then I realized it was Griddy. You think they’d have learnt when Griddy boned their customers in the heat of the summer. Electric is a regulated utility. Get a plan with an actual provider. Longer plan less cost, but usually no more than a few pennies per kwh. Anything else, like Griddy, is a shell game.
ReplyDeleteThis would be a good argument to skip the 'Real Time pricing' offered by Com Ed. In real time pricing, they charge the actual cost of actual usage by the hour. It makes some sense if the house is empty during the day, so you don't need to heat or cool it during prime time. But it's impossible to plan for one-in-lifetime events like this weather in Texas. Hurricanes are far more common.
ReplyDeleteGeek
There was a time-they used to call it "The Good Old Days"-when things worked, were affordable, and only broke infrequently. More to the point: when the proverbial bottom line cost (total $$$ billed divided by # kilowatt hours used) was around 3 cents/KW-hr and there were not 13 surcharges added to get the final charge.
ReplyDeleteBut, that was then and this is now.
Back in the early eighties, we were involved in an aspect of installation of gas pumping stations in eastern Colorado. Being on site with the gas suppliers employees daily, we were enlightened on the scam that the power company which supplied both power and gas to the end users indeed owned three gas companies which pumped nat gas around and each time the gas was moved to the next gas pumping company, the profit was jacked up a bit, profit went to the mother company, who in the end diluted the gas with compressed air for the correct usable combustion ratio. We, being the rubes we were, realized that our conservative quote for our work, was not rich enough for their scam, so we almost doubled our profit on the next installation bid, and still we were awarded a contract.
ReplyDelete