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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe it hasn't been deregulated enough? From the article

>Wholesale electricity sold are near the $9,000-per-megawatt hour maximum in power markets across the state Monday as the system struggled to meet demand, according to ERCOT.

Why bother spending millions on preparing for a once in a century event when your upside is capped? This is further compounded by the wholesale rates not being passed to consumers, which removes a lot of backpressure from the system. If turning on the heater costs $100/hr to run you're going to find alternatives (eg. co-habiting with your inlaws).

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> Why bother spending millions on preparing for a once in a century event when your upside is capped? This is further compounded by the wholesale rates not being passed to consumers, which removes a lot of backpressure from the system. If turning on the heater costs $100/hr to run you're going to find alternatives (eg. co-habiting with your inlaws).

If it's a once in a century (or once every 10 year) event, consumers aren't going to pay $100/hr to run their heater. They're going to refuse to pay the bill.

>They're going to refuse to pay the bill.

...and subsequently get their electricity cut off in a few months for non-payment? Besides, it isn't too hard to impose a cap on the rate you pay and requiring a credit card to be on file if you want to lift the limit. In other words, by default the maximum rate you'll pay is $2/kWH, but if you have a credit card on file you can put in whatever rate you want. If the wholesale price goes above the maxmimum rate you can pay your electricity gets cut off. If the utility thinks the rate is too high and you aren't going to pay, they'll pre-authorize your card for the amount. At that point they can let the credit card company/banks worry about chasing after the customers.

Especially given the household dynamic I see most, where only the person who actually pays the energy bill is actually considering the cost of heating.

Compound that with the fact that, unless utility billing has changed a lot in the last decade (I haven't been a master tenant in a while), people won't see how much more expensive that power is until after they've used it.

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