It could well be that even with these price spikes the energy retailers still have enough arb during the normal times to cover these wild times. If so it seems like markets are working insofar as consumers are paying lower average prices.
It might be that occasional price spikes are more economic than building new generation capacity.
Yep, deregulation is better for SOMEONE. I wonder who that might be.
For the next 600Kwh it goes to $.10, and then the next tier I used 882KWh at $0.12.
I find the rates reasonable. Texas is also leading the way on both solar and wind adoption. This is keeping the power supply at peak much more stable.
Also 0.12 is cheap but not the cheapest, see for example how much people pay in Quebec
There's a simple trick they used with making canals for barges back in the day. You dig a 3foot hole and line the sides with a 3foot wall and you get a 6foot deep canal.
I suspect the bigger issue with the parent's comment is that just because you know Texas has surge pricing doesn't mean that the surge will be high/long enough to cover the opportunity cost of energy storage. I bet spending say 1 billion on a new oil rig will pay back more money than 1 billion on a pumped storage.