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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

Deregulation in Texas has spurred intense competition for customers.

Huh. Who'd a thunk it.

made possible by the nearly universal distribution in recent years of residential smart meters

This is key. Demand-based metering and pricing has been available for industrial customers for a long time but residential customers had dumb mechanical meters that only recorded total kilowatt-hours. This sort of thing will also become important as electric cars become more mainstream, to encourage people to charge cars at low-demand times. Otherwise everyone plugging in their car at 6pm when they get home from work, while also cooking dinner and turning on the A/C is going to stress the grid.

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>> Deregulation in Texas has spurred intense competition for customers.

> Huh. Who'd a thunk it.

Anyone familiar with Enron. Or Comcast & Time Warner. Or any of a million other companies in a hundred other industries that has miraculously managed to avoid the purportedly inevitable race to the bottom. Of course, in this case "deregulation" isn't the full story:

> The incumbent utility in the area still owns and maintains the local power lines (and is the company to call in the event of a power outage) and is not subject to deregulation.

and "intense competition for customers" isn't the full story either:

> TCAP found that the average consumer living in one of the areas that opted out of deregulation, such as Austin and San Antonio, paid $288 less in 2012 than consumers in the deregulated areas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_elec...

Enron took advantage of the situation to be sure but California's deregulation plan was truly laughable. Retail prices were capped forcing PG&E and Southern Edison to pay whatever rates Enron and Dynegy could force by manipulating supply. Utilities were also banned from buying long-term contracts to stabilize prices.

The whole process was practically designed to fail.

Deregulated utilities will figure out some new way to screw their customers. Probably "plans", like cellular, where you pay a flat rate plus overage charges plus surge pricing, but have unlimited off-peak kilowatts up to your feeder capacity.

Very true, but I wouldn't blame the utilities for understanding the basics of the US.

This model is really the US standard to screw lower social classes that plays out elsewhere, i.e. credit cards as the national payment system instead of payer initiated direct transfer like in most(all?) of Europe.

Richer people will tend to have strategies and resources (i.e. the money and rights to modify their residence, control over their work schedule, etc) to pay bellow average which will make them richer. People under stress will have to pay whatever the spot rates are.

This is the only defensible position for businesses as the ones with resources and time to invest in organization are the ones who have the resources to use the political system as a tool against anyone who would have them pay their full share.

Deregulation of the energy market in California was a disaster, so some surprise is not unwarranted.

You don't need a smart meter to do demand-based pricing. You just need the electricity company to publish its pricing plans in a consumable format.

In fact most smart meter usage to date is reactive; customers have to first use electricity at peak times to learn that it is peak time and then modify their usage. And if the pricing schedule changes you'll be caught out again until you adapt.

Without smart metering, the utility has no way of knowing when you used the power. "Dumb" electrical meters just track total kWh.

Of course, both are right, unless an AI is running ones home energy use, the bill payer needs to know in advance the expected pricing so they can plan use, and of course smart meters are required to implement the billing side.

And once the pricing matches the economics, the consumer can be trained (or make choices depending on your cynicism)

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