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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

Of the things you could sue Griddy for, price gouging seems... silly. They're literally just passing along the wholesale price, not taking a profit from the spikes.

You could try to sue for negligence or not informing customers or whatever. But they simply are not gouging.

Edit: Also, I didn't appreciate that this wasn't even a market spike. The Texas government literally set a ludicrously high price, to try to boost supply:

> Texas’ Public Utility Commission, appointed by Abbott, raised the wholesale market price of electricity to $9 per kilo-watt hour — a 7,400% increase over the average 12 cents per kilo-watt hour — in response to rising demand. The hope was power generators would be enticed to produce more electricity.

So the charge is even more ridiculous that it first appears. Griddy is literally passing on the price set by the state government — and which they in turn were paying to suppliers.

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This logic is true for a lot of price gouging. Even with supply and demand aside, the cost of getting a generator or a bottle of water to a hurricane stricken area is much higher. But passing along these costs can hit you with huge penalties.

Not to defend this lawsuit, but there may be some precedent. A lot of price-gouging laws seem to enforce the idea that it's better to shutter your business than to markup the costs of your goods.

The effects this has on exacerbating supply issues in disaster recovery is another matter entirely...

Maybe the solution is for Griddy to file their own price-gouging lawsuit against the Public Utility Commission or ERCOT or whoever it is that collects or is responsible for the $9 price?

>So the charge is even more ridiculous that it first appears. Griddy is literally passing on the price set by the state government — and which they in turn were paying to suppliers.

On the other hand...

>Unlike many state price gouging statutes, [Texas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act] does not contain an exception for increased costs

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/don-t-mess-texas-price-...

I guess the logical conclusion is to also sue the wholesale energy producers for charging the state-mandated inflated price.

They did actually try and warn customers - though the efficacy of that warning might be debatable.

Yeah. I think suing here is dumb and premature, given that the state gov is likely going to make the customers whole anyway. But even if you have to sue right now, this seems like a bad approach.

Well they don't understand they were gouged by the grid itself.

I'm not an expert on electric power, but it seems like a pretty elastic good in the short term. Would bumping the price up so dramatically actually have an impact on supply?

You mean inelastic? Most consumers in texas are paying fixed rates, so they're not going to change their buying habits.

Yes I did, thank you.

I could see it having an impact at the margins, getting natural gas providers to work VERY hard to get their pipes or wells defrosted and flowing.

At a 10% markup it wouldn't matter, but when you're getting 70x the payout... you can make a lot of money from just a couple days of production.

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