… and this is why I oppose the “internet of things” and putting everything on line. You get this shit happening. Just what until some group of hackers takes over the Texas grid entirely, then you’ll really see fun times.
The way this came about is that some of the power providers basically gave people free smart thermostats (Nest brand ones are the ones I saw the most ads for), with the stipulation that in times of power shortage, the providers could remotely adjust their temperatures.
So it’s another case of dumbshits signing up for something that seems too good to be true, and then bitching when it’s time to pay the piper. If they didn’t want the power providers to adjust their thermostats when power gets tight, they shouldn’t have taken the free smart thermostat.
It’s not far off from those other nimrods who signed up for power plans based on the wholesale spot price of electricity or natural gas, and then got handed massive bills in February when both spiked like crazy. No sympathy there either.
They didn’t get handed bills. They had their account auto-debited each day. Apparently that’s how these plans work. I shudder to think of it.
And I am somewhat sympathetic to the wholesale rate people. The spike was insane.
Those plans are entirely ridiculous. I remember seeing them and thinking that they were pretty exposed to short-term fluctuations in price. At the time, I was thinking more along the lines of weeks long blips in the price that you’d normally see, such as a power plant goes offline unexpectedly, and the price rises 20% for a week- that sort of thing. I never even considered something like a 1000% spike in a day sort of event like we saw in February.
But it seemed pretty risky to me. I’m a big fan of predictable, or at least semi-predictable bills for budgeting purposes. Having my bill fluctuate like that didn’t appeal to me, even in the absence of insane price spikes.
I guess it strikes me as there being a population of people who don’t read the fine print, or who are so smitten with the idea of lower prices/free stuff that they don’t really consider what the consequences could be. I mean, when I saw the news articles about the auto-adjusted thermostats, I knew what it was about right away from having looked into the whole free thermostat thing myself. And decided that I didn’t like it, so I just kept my regular thermostat.
Did they have a choice?
I would assume yes - they were sold on the concept that they would save money (low rates generally, higher rates in peak times so they would have an incentive to use less then), and in normal times they would be fine (because the high rates were just high).
In the winter disaster the high rates became ridiculously high - and there was no reason for someone to think that would happen. I hope that no one signs up for a plan like that in the future that doesn’t have some sort of rate cap on it.
Yes, nobody was forced into a wholesale electricity plan. But honestly there was no downside to it, because of the Republican philosophy on the free market – privatize the benefits, socialize the costs. Republicans like to hold forth on the benefits of “free market solutions” to problems, but they always blink when the market imposes significant costs on voters.
And so our AG has forced the major wholesale plan provider to forgive unpaid electric bills and is, “engaged in ongoing good faith negotiations to attempt to address additional relief for those customers who have already paid their storm-related energy bills.”
I find it really amusing that people are complaining about their electric company turning down their ACs (people with actual, say medical, needs excepted) when the other, almost certain, option was a straight up blackout.
In Texas, yes, we can choose who our electricity supplier is. The plans may be confusing with lots of gotchas, but we do actually get to choose.
Of course they did. That’s one of the great things about the deregulated power system in Texas; there are power plans to fit nearly everyone’s needs/desires.
Most people go with plans where the per-kWh rate is fixed for the term of the contract- for example, you might sign up for a year at 13 cents/kWh or something like that. It doesn’t change, even if say… it’s particularly windy, or the natural gas price goes super low. But it doesn’t go up either if the opposite happens.
Others go with ones where the rate tracks the natural gas price, which is pretty close to the wholesale power price.
The ones in question were ones where it was taken even further, and the price/charges were updated even more often than that- Griddy, one of the more infamous ones, actually charged a flat fee, and then enabled customers to buy power at the wholesale rate- hourly, per kilowatt-hour in fact. They billed in more or less real-time as well- blocks of $50, as best I can tell. This appeals to people’s greed because the wholesale rate is a lot less than the fixed rates typically are- several cents a kWh for sure.
So the first category didn’t see higher bills- that’s the vast, vast majority of electric consumers in Texas. The second probably did see higher prices, but only insofar as the natural gas futures price may have gone up for the next month as a result of the February fiasco.
But the people on the extremely variable rate plans got nailed to the wall- they were paying wholesale prices as high as $9000/kWh for a few days. They’re the ones screaming bloody murder because they got hit with the consequences of what they had signed up for.
That sounds really messy. Do you mean that when I move into a new place in Texas, there are an assortment of power lines ready to be connected up to the residence, and I choose which one I want?
The actual power provider is set by where you are and there is a fixed charge for delivery
On my bill is see 4.8 c/kw hr which is fixed cost to center point the actual infrastructure people.
I then pay 7.6c/kw hr whixhbis my contract rate with Reliant for the next 2 years.
That reliant part is the thing you have a lot of choice forn, the fixed part is set by various laws to cover the cost of the infrastructure for delivery.
It’s actually pretty easy, tou only have to deal with your provider and they just tack on the fixed delivery charge per kw/hr
There are often a monthly fixed charge of 5 or 6 bucks a month on top of that.
No… there’s one legal monopoly “Transmission and Distribution Utility” that handles the actual local wiring and distribution- in my case it’s Oncor.
There are also Retail Electric Providers- Reliant, TXU, Gexa, Cirro, and Green Mountain are some of the more prominent ones. They’re who you pay for your power, and they pass a charge on from your TDU for that local transmission and distribution service, which is a mix of a flat fee plus a per-kWh fee.
So your bill will consist of a retail amount per kWh, and a second section for the TDU, as well as a myriad of weird little taxes and fees from regulatory agencies.
You get to choose your own Retail Electric Provider- they market themselves a zillion ways- some tout their green energy usage (Green Mountain, Gexa), others unusual billing structures (free nights & weekends (Reliant, Gexa), and others more strange stuff like fixed monthly amounts (Cirro).
If you’re savvy, you can get good deals, but if you’re lazy, stupid, ignorant or some combination of the three, you’re going to get nailed. For example, Cirro’s “Simply Flat” plan quotes me a flat monthly fee that’s slightly more than this last June’s bill. And it was a HOT June. So I’d save a bit in July and August, but get overcharged for the other 10 months of the year on their plan. But it’s “simple” and doesn’t change, which I guess is attractive to people, even if they’re being absurdly overcharged by it.
Other plans let you do stuff like be billed a 12 month rolling average- you get overcharged less, but your bills are less dramatically variable (here in Texas, the difference between August and January can be 3x or more).
There are services that you can subscribe to that will periodically reassess your power plan and move you to new ones when it’s economically feasible, including breaking contracts, etc…
Also FWIW this gives a lit of latitude for suppliers to offer “1/2 price electricity over night” or 'free weekends" but it isnt really free you still pay the 5c /kw he delivery charge and the non free rates are typically higher.
Most meters are smart meters and the power companies know your usage very well and also have a good idea of what loads you can move around , say do a lot of laundry at the weekend , and know they can buy cheap electricity at night when the wind is blowing and demand is low, but you still need to run your AC at higher rates during the day.
Fortunately they are required to issue a standard format price sheet with each plan so you can get the details in a consistent way. You can also get your useage on a hour by hour basis if you want , so with a small amount of excel it’s easy to see through the fluff, and pick a good plan, but most people cant or wont.
Overall it is not a terrible system, the main issues are grid resilience, no interstate connectivity, and lack of investment in infrastructure, which to an extent is connected with the fixed portion of the bill rather than the variable rate.
Also, it’s not just a Texas thing. Well, the variety and scope might be, but not the bifurcation of the physical infrastructure and the power source/company. When I was in New York, National Grid was the company who handed the physical infrastructure of the lines and such and they were also the default power provider. But there were a number of other options, often with various incentives, that could be used instead. I never did, because I’m lazy and never saw the point.
AUSTIN — State officials have added 59 deaths to the toll wrought by the Feb. 14 cold wave and the ensuing collapse of the Texas electric power grid.
The deaths newly tallied by the Texas Department of State Health Services boost the toll from 151 to 210 deaths, most from exposure to the sometimes-subzero temperatures. But some were blamed on carbon monoxide poisoning as freezing Texans sought warmth from cars and outdoor grills.
The count remained preliminary and may change as more deaths are confirmed, the department said.
The county with the highest death toll was Harris, with 43 deaths. Travis County had 28 deaths. Dallas County reported 20 deaths.
The toll is a far cry from the initial March 15 report of 57 deaths. The toll was raised to 111 on March 25, 125 on April 6 and 151 on April28.
The collapse of the power grid managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has made electric reliability in Texas an ongoing political question.
In early June, Gov. Gregg Abbott declared that state lawmakers had fixed the problem during its regular session that had just adjourned. Since then, two conservation alerts issued by ERCOT during temperate spring weather prompted renewed questions, and Abbott ordered new measures by the Public Utility Commission that he appointed and that oversees ERCOT.
B-b-b-but Unca Greg says it’s all fixed now! So, no worries!
Since they have the energy infrastructure straightened out, they have time to erase history. Everything to RepubliQuins is just an alternate reality anyway.
They thought that a blackout would only affect other people. You know, not good pale skinned folks such as themselves.
No, the other option was fixing the fucking grid instead of using a vital service as a medium for outright graft.
If/when the electrical system is run as a transparent public utility, then I will be open to arguments that the best solution for the community is rolling blackouts in extreme cases. But when it’s being run as a total cluster fuck that the state legislature refuses to address because it’s wildly profiting a few at the expense of the many, even after a state-wide collapse less than a year ago, I’m really not open to being guilt tripped about how I need to be selfless.