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Griddy Is Shutting Down

griddy.com

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101–110 of 267 posts

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#101

Post by westwooded »

> On the same day when ERCOT announced that it had a $2.1 billion shortfall, it decided to take this action against only one company that represents a tiny fraction of the market and that shortfall. We have always been transparent and customer-centric at every step.

Griddy defaulted and was unable to pay their financial obligation to the market. They tried to put some marketing spin on this but simply put, if you cannot pay your obligations, then ERCOT will initiate the default procedure. This is terrible for the remaining market participants who are still solvent because now Griddy's debts will be shared by the market.

Griddy should inform the public how much exactly of the $2.1B short pay they are responsible for.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#102

Post by nrmitchi »

dragonwriter wrote: post #92
nrmitchi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The customer debt from this can be sold off, but you might be lucky to get a penny-on-the-dollar for it.

Maybe, because it's going to (on average) be hard to collect. But the debt doesn't go away automatically or get reduced, it goes to whoever paid that penny... (Now, if that's John Oliver [0], maybe it also gets forgiven, but that's not the usual case...) [0] https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/john-oliver-buys-15...

Haha that's just what we need here, all of the "winter storm electricity" debt becoming (yes, a lower amount of) "income tax owed to the IRS" debt.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#103

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

bdcravens wrote: post #72
freeone3000 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usual wholesale price of electricity is around $0.11 per kWh. The retail price of electricity is around $0.16 per kWh. So you save about $0.05 per kWh used in an average month -- not bad! That's a free $20! Until a "100 year" storm comes along, and makes the wholesale price of electricity $9 per kWh. Now instead of saving $20, you owe $8,800 more than usual.

I had the service for 2 years. Most months I saved $50-100. Until this month wiped out my savings the entire time (I was able to jump ship soon enough to "only" rack up $1300 of electric bills with them lol)

If I was saving $50-100, I would have put the extra towards a decent generator.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#104

Post by shiftpgdn »

rajangdavis wrote: post #98

I think we should take it at good faith that Griddy was trying to provide a good service at what might have been a reasonable price that didn't factor in the entire Texas grid going down and the unexpected costs that would get passed on to consumers... But, if I received a link to this page from my utility company, I would instantly feel a strong aversion towards them for the following reasons: 1. It's using a flat d…

I think a lot of your confusion stems from the media basically smearing Griddy for "charging customer outrageous rates" when the reality was that Griddy allowed customers to buy directly from the producers at the spot rate (which was based upon demand) which was then announced to all system users by the states energy management system. The price spike was due to demand overload and critical infrastructure going offline.

I LOVED Griddy. It was an amazing product that gave users the power to dictate the terms of their energy consumption based upon grid load. When energy usage was high and they needed to fire up natural gas or diesel plants to meet demand my price would change above the 10c/kwh threshold and my energy usage would fall off as my smart home would automatically shut off lights, adjust the a/c or heater, etc. Further, I was able to take advantage of excess wind energy at night by running my dishes, washing my clothes and charging my car on scheduled off peak times.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#105

Post by toast0 »

Robotbeat wrote: post #39
bvinc wrote: post #19

I always thought this was a good idea for a company. Almost all of the electricity providers in Texas all buy energy at wholesale prices and lock customers into long term contracts. If you were an electricity provider, what would be the best plan that you would want for yourself and your friends? My answer to that would be to have access to buy energy at the cheap wholesale prices for a flat monthly fee. This seems t…

It's a good idea if you have a whole-house generator giving you optionality. Even running on diesel, it's only like 50 cents per kWh vs $9/kWh. If you chop off the most expensive part of the curve, wholesale can save you a lot. It might be a good idea for whole-house generator companies, actually: offer your customers the same thing as Griddy except with the option of automatically switching to your generator if rate…

There's a bit of an issue in that you don't really want to run your generator for too many hours. I think mine wants service every 100 hours or every year whichever comes first. Maybe 100 hours is enough for actual backup and substantial peak shaving though; I certainly haven't studied the spot prices in TX, as I wouldn't live there. ;)

If you had local battery storage, and decent forecasting for house demand and spot prices, I think you could have some fun and save some money. Bonus if you can coordinate loads too. Of course, the more people who do that, the flatter the price curve gets, and the less incentive there is to do it.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#106

Post by gurleen_s »

seventytwo wrote: post #88

But I was told the free market solves everything and that anything run by the government is impossibly inept and corrupt! To be clear, the emergent system that comes from a free-ish market is an amazing thing and works very well in most cases. ... Just not well for critical infrastructure.

Nor food, nor housing, etc... we need a different system for people’s necessities.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#107

Post by acomjean »

Robotbeat wrote: post #77

So, a thing I've been thinking of is that... because most people are on constant rate plans (where there isn't any incentive to cut back during a supply and/or demand crunch), the overall grid demand is a lot more inelastic than it would be if everyone where on a Griddy-like service. When, say, 75% of demand is insensitive to price signals, to get the 25% of demand that is sensitive to respond takes a MUCH bigger pri…

Pricing of electricity is confusing and very varried. Usually it’s business that pay the variable rates.

I worked at a power monitoring startup. We looked at states that had peak demand and tried to estimate commercial electricity bills and sent alerts if a business was close to its peak usage.

“ Some utilities will charge customers based on their individual peak demand. The highest demand during each month or even a single 15 to 30 minute period of highest use in the previous year may be used to calculate charges”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_demand

It’s hard to figure out what the charges are going to be.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#108

Post by shiftpgdn »

toast0 wrote: post #105
Robotbeat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good idea if you have a whole-house generator giving you optionality. Even running on diesel, it's only like 50 cents per kWh vs $9/kWh. If you chop off the most expensive part of the curve, wholesale can save you a lot. It might be a good idea for whole-house generator companies, actually: offer your customers the same thing as Griddy except with the option of automatically switching to your generator if rate…

There's a bit of an issue in that you don't really want to run your generator for too many hours. I think mine wants service every 100 hours or every year whichever comes first. Maybe 100 hours is enough for actual backup and substantial peak shaving though; I certainly haven't studied the spot prices in TX, as I wouldn't live there. ;) If you had local battery storage, and decent forecasting for house demand and spo…

I had been kicking that idea around in 2019 after the huge system load ERCOT experienced resulting in record spot prices. My estimate was I could generate around 2 mil/year on a 10 million dollar investment offering battery to grid during peak load hours.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#110

Post by shiftpgdn »

freeone3000 wrote: post #56
lxe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how is this bad?

The usual wholesale price of electricity is around $0.11 per kWh. The retail price of electricity is around $0.16 per kWh. So you save about $0.05 per kWh used in an average month -- not bad! That's a free $20! Until a "100 year" storm comes along, and makes the wholesale price of electricity $9 per kWh. Now instead of saving $20, you owe $8,800 more than usual.

I saved around $1700/year on Griddy due to some very simple smart home automation. My goal this year was to push it much further than that, alas.
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