$5,152 Power Bill? Texas’ Winter Storm Hell Only Gets Worse | Hacker News Reader

$5,152 Power Bill? Texas’ Winter Storm Hell Only Gets Worse

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29 pointsgscott12 comments

I get that this is an unfolding disaster. People are trying to push through as best as they can. And I really don't know anything about the Texan energy-market. But the quotes in this article rub me the wrong way.

> Stressing that he is hoping for a relief package from the state to help with the bill, Pierce said he is just living under the assumption “this is a later problem.”

A twisted form of privatizing the gain and socializing the losses. First they went with Griddy so they didn't have to pay for future capacity during exceptional events. Now they're out-bidding everybody else on the spot-market. And they hope that those bids will be paid by the community.

And then Griddy adds their tune: “We want what’s right by our consumers, so we are encouraging them to leave.”

Oh you didn't tell them about this risk did you? You said it would be cheaper, didn't you? And now you hope your customers will go quietly and won't try to hold you liable for not telling them. I'm not even sure at this point Griddy doesn't bet against their own customers in this. I mean, others are doing it too, why shouldn't they? And Griddy can observe first-hand who's flexible on price.

> “I think people are greedy. It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I am dumbfounded. There is no compassion or grace for people.”

Said somebody after becoming the sucker on a market they'd embraced as long as it worked out in their favor.

I mean, I can very well see myself in that situation. Not having thought about the consequences. Having to rely on a provider that's connecting me directly to the leeches who assure everybody how much efficiency they're providing. It's not the time for reflection. I just worry that when this blows over people will be right back not wanting to pay for critical infrastructure because that's something communism.

If everyone in Texas was on Griddy, demand would have been properly modulated by price and these rolling blackouts would have never occurred. The insurance that flat rate power plans provide are precisely why people feel comfortable wasting electricity on computers and televisions instead of using the bare minimum. Their neighbors in a different cell are freezing in the dark, but when the incentive to reduce usage is $0.10 an hour, who the hell cares?

In a world with cell phones and smart things, Griddy makes perfect sense. It's ecologically friendly. It's economically efficient. You do care about the planet, don't you?

A lot of power companies are going to be bankrupt after this. Griddy will not be.

Oh I can see those dynamics too. The thing is that people want stable pricing. And when they don't get it, they look around for somebody to blame. From what I read, I get the impression that they understand they're the suckers in a racket but can't get out. One customer even hopes to get compensated for out-bidding their neighbours over the privilege of heating.

You could say that that was just a newspaper fishing for quotes. That most Griddy customers are not like that and happy how it works. But that would be a different argument from saying they should want it.

> You do care about the planet, don't you?

You like asking loaded questions, don't you?

Demand would not have been modulated by price when the need is inelastic. People would’ve used what they would argue they needed for heat, and then default on the exorbitant bill, just like American healthcare.

Certain markets are best of being regulated. Energy is essential to survival and when your child is freezing and you have to pay exorbhitant prices for heating, the first step is to identify the culprit. And the culprit is not the greedy energy company, but a society that holds money as the ultimate gauge for progress.

Stop voting against buzz words. Modern society requires a healthy mix of capitalism and regulation. Withoit which, society will swing like a pendulum on resonance and break itself apart. With every unforseen event pushing it further away from equilibrium.

Actually griddy was little misleading but not totally dishonest.

“The highest the price can go to is $9/kWh (which has only ever happened 0.005% of the time.) Most of the time, though, 96% to be exact, it stays below the Texas Average of 6¢/kWh”

Thanks for that quote. Turning this around we get: "On about fourteen days within the year we'll be above the average price. And on half a day in the average year we'll charge 150 times the average price."

And now this is not the average year.

The shortage of electricity was primarily caused by thermal power plants (nuclear, coal, gas, etc). However, the increased demand for electricity was primarily caused by electric heating. Heating is the Ahilles heel of renewables.

Solar and wind produce electricity directly. Burning wood pellets is worse than gas. There are no good choices here, beyond storing excess production in some sort of heat storage facility. If there was a place for small scale nuclear then this would be it. The waste heat could be leveraged for district heating.

Swings and spikes in generation is considered the achilles heel of renewables, but electrified heating on a smarter grid will go a long way to making that problem go away.

Thermal storage is by far the cheapest energy storage solution currently on the market (or even on the horizon), but it's limited that without highly specialized equipment you can only use thermal storage for thermal activity. Great news, turns out we use a huge amount of energy for heating and cooling.

I'd happily install a bunch of highly insulated water tanks in my basement and use an air (or ground) source heat pump at times electricity is cheap (or renewables are spiking the grid) to store a ton of heat that is slowly released through my house as needed. For cooling there are already commercial solutions that will freeze water when overnight with cheap electricity and then cool the building during the day using the energy required to melt the ice.

The renewable future is far more distributed than our current grid, with generation and storage much physically closer to their actual usage.

Don’t worry, the invisible hand of the market will solve this.

Right after it buys some mittens.

Demand and offer, self regulating markets, capitalism, yadda yadda yadda

Is anyone surprised really ?

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