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Griddy Is Shutting Down

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Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#51

Post by sp332 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #28
Afforess wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem here as I understand it is that ERCOT stepped in and artificially set an absurdly high wholesale price Incorrect. ERCOT set a price ceiling, not a price. The wholesale price without the ERCOT price ceiling would have been far, far higher than $9000 kwh. That ERCOT is at blame for the price ceiling is absurd . * ERCOT is to blame for a lot of other things though.

I don't think you are correct. Here's another source: https://thetexan.news/texas-utility-regulator-increased-elec... > “Because energy prices should reflect scarcity of the supply, the market price for the energy needed to serve load being shed in the face of scarcity should also be at its highest,” the PUC’s news release stated. > The PUC added, “The decision was spurred by ERCOT’s discovery that energy prices acro…

I don't blame them for doing whatever it took to attract electricity generation onto the grid. But passing the costs directly to customers seems like the wrong way to handle that side of the transaction. I think the difference should have been paid for as part of the overall relief package.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#52

Post by nrmitchi »

creato wrote: post #36
coryrc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26282576 disagrees with you

I don't think it does. I think you are misreading it.

> On February 15, during the power crisis, the state's Public Utility Commission required ERCOT to set the price to the $9,000 maximum.

Which part do you think they're mis-reading?

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#53

Post by monkpit »

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…

I did switch to them for a month, 2 summers ago. My typical summer bills would be around $100-$150. After a $350 monthly bill from Griddy, I immediately bailed. Glad I did...

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#54

Post by dehrmann »

Griddy says "ERCOT took our members." Bloomberg says "ERCOT revoked Griddy’s rights to conduct activity in the state’s electricity market due to nonpayment."

Apparently Griddy couldn't pay the bills their customers racked up, or is waiting on customers paying their $10k power bills?

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#55

Post by brundolf »

There was a bizarre phenomenon around the national reporting on people getting crazy electricity bills after the crisis. Very few of them mentioned Griddy in the headline, or even anywhere near the top, even though its customers were (I believe) the only Texans who actually got crazy bills. All the ones that I saw buried their mention of Griddy deep in the details, which gave the impression that many or most Texans were having this problem.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#56

Post by freeone3000 »

lxe wrote: post #45
Fellshard wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that you're buying straight from the suppliers instead of through the many-tiered energy brokerage that is used down here.

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.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#57

Post by dnautics »

Analemma_ wrote: post #13
teeray wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s surprising there isn’t some insurance product to defend against the surprise bills.

How would that differ from just paying retail price for electricity?

Well for starters you're adding a third party into the mix.

I guess that sounds sarcastic, because probably for most people it's not worth it, but there's probably a point where the added overhead of the third party is worth the savings. Maybe then the third party insurer would be motivated to build active cost monitoring device that will cut the power to your house when the price gets too high. Do you trust your power provider to build un-backdooered logic, that they won't use for other purposes, for such a thing?

It being a third party also affords other opportunities, like, not buying the insurance and building your own power/price monitoring kit/algorithm. Suppose you are willing to pay a high premium to keep your freezer running but not the wall warts on all of your voltage-transformed devices?

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#58

Post by gizmo686 »

Afforess wrote: post #20
bpodgursky wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here as I understand it is that ERCOT stepped in and artificially set an absurdly high wholesale price, to try to stimulate production. And then Griddy was forced to pass this price straight down to their customers. The narrative about this being a "market failure" seems really wrong. Really seems like it should be on TX to make the customers whole here, given that they ordered Griddy to pass along huge a…

>The problem here as I understand it is that ERCOT stepped in and artificially set an absurdly high wholesale price Incorrect. ERCOT set a price ceiling, not a price. The wholesale price without the ERCOT price ceiling would have been far, far higher than $9000 kwh. That ERCOT is at blame for the price ceiling is absurd . * ERCOT is to blame for a lot of other things though.

Two subtleties involved here:

A) There are actually 2 price ceilings. The $9000/MWh is the "high" cap. The situation lasted for long enough that they were supposed to switch to the "low" cap of (the greater of) $2,000/MWh or 50x the natural gas price index. Due to the also high price of natural gas during the crisis, this "low" cap ended up being higher then the "high" cap.

B) To protect the grid at a techincal level, portions of it were disconnected (load shedding). The result is that the "market" value within the grid that remained connected actually did drop below the cap. Since this only happened because supply was so low that some consumers couldn't buy at any price, the decision was made to set the price to the cap to better reflect the full demand instead of just the demand that was still connected.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#59

Post by Robotbeat »

lxe wrote: post #45
Fellshard wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that you're buying straight from the suppliers instead of through the many-tiered energy brokerage that is used down here.

But how is this bad?

Because electricity demand was too inelastic, the pricing signal was set extremely high by ERCOT. So folks go saddled with ~$8000 electricity bills for that month.

Re: Griddy Is Shutting Down

#60

Post by dragonwriter »

freeone3000 wrote: post #44
jasonjayr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they do net-metering down in TX ?

Better. Retail price in Texas depends on time-of-use, so you're paid more per kWh for the electricity you net-generate during the day than the electricity you net-use during the night.

Of course, once enough people do it, peak price time moves out of solar-generating-but-home-use-low time (see, e.g., California.)
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