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Griddy Is Shutting Down

griddy.com

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Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#211

Post by Robotbeat »

panta82 wrote: post #147
aaomidi wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh my lord, what is this thinking. People have enough shit to be worried about than to worry about their power ticker going up and down. This is not something we should add as a burden to our citizens. Next I'm going to hear people wanting to short electricity.

Exactly. Electricity should be something that just exists, as an ambiance around you. That you pay a predictable, modest monthly bill, and can than focus on other things. Who needs the drama of free markets there? Also applies to net neutrality and health-care btw.

The electricity price is not low if you use it without consideration of cost. Why bother with LED lights, heat-pumps, or proper insulation if you’re totally insensitive to the cost of electricity?

What happens in such situations is electricity ends up being rationed with rolling blackouts. Or, if you manage to produce enough anyway by massive government investment, per capita energy usage skyrockets. The former situation happens in developing countries and the latter in oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia which heavily subsidize electricity costs so it ends up being cheaper to just run the A/C at full blast constantly instead of properly insulating your household.

But most people don’t care about climate change, so maybe that’s the direction things would go.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#212

Post by Robotbeat »

imtringued wrote: post #192
Traster wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re missing the wood for the trees a bit here. Firstly, the scale of the incident in TX went for beyond what could be handled by demand management through price controls anyway- most of the supply isn’t designed to handle those temperatures. No rate was going to increase supply (which is obviously half of the equation). On the demand side it’s a much more complex question than demand being inelastic. No ma…

>Essentially the effect of what you’re saying is poor people would be priced out of an essential utility to ensure rich people get a stable supply. No, that's not the case. The entire point of a market system is to encourage people to use the limited resources on the most critical needs first. However, since there is a fixed rate culture the end result is that everyone wastes energy on non essential needs. There simp…

Besides that, supply IS elastic in the longer term. So if the rich were able to bid the price up, there would be folks able to make a bunch of money selling power to them, reducing the cost. And that opportunity should be available to most people. If we had standardized feed-in capability on smart meters, whole house generators, solar roofs and batteries, or even cars could sell electricity on the grid when the wholesale price got insane.

Poor folks would be insulated from the large swings in price by the 25-50% guaranteed price portion of the power supply. (And you could make the price guarantee portion progressive by making it a constant 3kW (averaged over an hour) or whatever regardless of house size, so smaller houses would have much more of their electricity at a fixed rate than larger houses.)

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#213

Post by Robotbeat »

nannal wrote: post #162
m463 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, electricity pricing is a construct. To some extent it is designed so that you do worry and limit use of a shared resource. I think other utilities like internet service adopt this construct, then monetize worry to get you to pay a little more for all-you-can-eat. There's an interesting quote from a former chairman of the atomic energy commission: It is not too much to expect that our children will…

Can you imagine being that hopeful about the future, I know a lot of people are opting not to have children due to the environmental nightmare those children would have to survive.

I am hopeful about the future, and I am training my children up to be assets in the fight against climate change and poverty.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#214

Post by Robotbeat »

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…

100 hours is quite a long time. If the wholesale electricity price is $9/kWh during these super peaks and you have a 10kW generator, that’s $9000.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#215

Post by orwin »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #137
gpm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, definitely wasn't trying to accuse Griddy of price gouging here, they're just a middle man. I am accusing the people who set the price of doing so (at least morally), and perhaps even the producers of the electricity who didn't set the price (as well as those who were involved in setting it) since they are going along with selling it at that exorbitant price.

The market price is literally there for them as a signal when to generate and when to not. That's the whole point of the market.

A market is extremelly inneficient at managing a pwer grid, unless you install HFT computers at each power plant.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#216

Post by bdavis__ »

bdcravens wrote: post #61
dangwu wrote: post #41

I had no idea what Griddy was, and after glancing at the website, I assumed it was a failed tech startup. I’ve never seen a utility company with such a modern website and design language before.

I was a customer of theirs for 2+ years until last week - I really enjoyed the feeling of a "modern" electric provider.

I was also a customer. I hated the "web2.0" look. Information was pretty, but it was on different pages and loaded slow.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#217

Post by gruez »

salawat wrote: post #181
nrmitchi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there is an exception to price gouging laws if the cost of producing the direct item/product/service is impacted. In this case Griddy's cost went way up as well, which makes them not-clearly-in-the-wrong. For the power producers on the other hand, it seems exceptionally clear (to me anyways) that this was just state-sponsored price gouging: https://theintercept.com/2021/02/23/texas-winter-storm-gas-p...

Do you have any idea how much damage can be done to the grid if there is a great disparity that forms between demand and supply? You literally had machines running on redline to keep up with demand because so much generation capacity went offline at the same time, and the weather precliuded deployment of either the personnel or equipment to handle it safely and quickly. That is why the statutory max price was set. If…

>They figured the pricing signal would control demand.

>Well... They were wrong.

I don't think they ever thought it would reduce demand, they just thought it would increase supply. The reasoning for not reducing demand is simple: most consumers pay fixed rate plans, so if you were at home and had power, there really wasn't any incentive for you to reduce power consumption.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#218

Post by currymj »

nickysielicki wrote: post #50

This fucking sucks. I'm angry. I have a pretty dark outlook when it comes to global warming, but when you're a griddy customer and you're watching your meter constantly, it just made sense . For a brief moment in time, a green future based on renewables felt realistic. For a brief moment in time, I felt like we might actually be able to meet carbon emission goals. When it cost a lot to make electricity, I used less.…

the griddy model is that everyone should take a sort of second job as an electricity trader, but not make any money doing it.

it wouldn’t be a problem if it were just a matter of paying a little more or less, that would be great.

but there are catastrophic tail risks. so you have to constantly be watching because if your vigilance slips for even a few hours at a crucial time it could financially ruin you. traders at least get paid to do this and can de-risk when they need to.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#219

Post by airhead969 »

Austinite (not the mineral) here.

Tweaking Griddy's business model would be viable:

wholesale prices + X% with a cap of no more than +Y% increase in pricing per month. This way, there is price stability for the customer and no insane, surprise bills.

In truth, public utilities should just operate this way to begin with rather than turning inelastic demand necessities into a casino.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#220

Post by airhead969 »

panta82 wrote: post #147
aaomidi wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh my lord, what is this thinking. People have enough shit to be worried about than to worry about their power ticker going up and down. This is not something we should add as a burden to our citizens. Next I'm going to hear people wanting to short electricity.

Exactly. Electricity should be something that just exists, as an ambiance around you. That you pay a predictable, modest monthly bill, and can than focus on other things. Who needs the drama of free markets there? Also applies to net neutrality and health-care btw.

Yes. If generated from renewable sources, power should have a reasonable cost so people aren't server bitcoin mining or indoor weed farming for pennies when power is a limited resource. Prices should be smoothed out and predictable to the customer.
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