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Comment by analyte123 | Hacker News Reader

An appropriate analogy for this would be where wholesale beef markets were "deregulated", but the state government put in a program that allowed approximately half the state's population to get vouchers for a 35% discount on beef, driving up the price for everyone else (the CARE program). And the state government mandated grocers and restaurants buy certified organic regenerative beef for at least 50% of the beef they sell (the renewable requirement).

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You are leaving out some very important things:

- Price stability itself has a value for electricity consumers. Insulating consumers from the price variations that come from the inherent variability in supply and demand is a major "feature" of retail electric service. While one could provide their own stability with enough personal batteries and generators, practically that's only really possible for the wealthy.

- Lack of regulation around planning, upkeep, maintenance, and backup planning results in short-term profit maximization among generators (and cost minimization among consumers who enjoy very low electric rates in the short term) leads to situations like the catastrophic Texas outages of 2021. Now that Texas has legislated price-caps (which is direct economic regulation) [1], typical rates will rise.

1. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/22/texas-electricity-po...

That isn't a "price-cap" on electricity, it's a limit to what is essentially a tax routed through electricity bills and given to utility companies, to the tune of about $30 per person per year. The intent of the tax is to improve the grid, although its efficacy is under question, as the article mentions.

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