Electricity Providers

[FrogFan]

I'm curious: If you have Griddy, does Oncor (or its equivalent) still have the option to cut your power, even though you're willing to pay spot prices for power? I ask this as a Direct Energy (and Oncor) customer who has been without power for over 50 hours and counting.

[philip964]

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbauma ... k-n2585059

Electric bills as high as $17,000 for the 5 day disaster.

BTW Texas taxes the $17,000 at about $850 as well. They got to get their cut.

[chamberc]

I'm curious: If you have Griddy, does Oncor (or its equivalent) still have the option to cut your power, even though you're willing to pay spot prices for power? I ask this as a Direct Energy (and Oncor) customer who has been without power for over 50 hours and counting.

Yes, who generates your power has nothing to do with when you're provided power.

[FrogFan]

I'm curious: If you have Griddy, does Oncor (or its equivalent) still have the option to cut your power, even though you're willing to pay spot prices for power? I ask this as a Direct Energy (and Oncor) customer who has been without power for over 50 hours and counting.

Yes, who generates your power has nothing to do with when you're provided power.

That's what I thought. There has been a lot of chatter, here and elsewhere, about which provider people had and the implication that some were more reliable than others in providing (delivering) it. We consumers have no control over delivery reliability; e.g., we can't pay more for better reliability, even if we wanted to. Stated differently, even if we elect to pay extremely high prices on the spot market for power, there is no guarantee that Oncor (or whoever) can deliver it, or indeed is allowed to deliver it (by ERCOT). Seems like a major point of failure.

I went without power for 75 hours straight. I see here that others were out even longer than that. Something needs to change.

[03Lightningrocks]

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbauma ... k-n2585059

Electric bills as high as $17,000 for the 5 day disaster.

BTW Texas taxes the $17,000 at about $850 as well. They got to get their cut.

MY Gosh! Who could afford a bill like that??? Surely they can't make a person pay that much. It almost seems criminal.

[philip964]

I was told by someone who went to the ERCOT site that Houston and Dallas had the most percentage of customers with outages.

Where as San Antonio or Austin for example had a much lower percentage of customers who went without power. So it may be Centerpoint and who ever it is in Dallas, said "hey we will take the fall for this, shut us off"

Or maybe if your trying to reduce big useage in a hurry its easier to flip a big switch than lots of small switches.

Governor is holding up bills for customers. I think a lot of small cheap electricity providers went bankrupt part way through all this (because they couldn't pass on the $9 rates to their customers or could not borrow money until their customers paid them), when they went out of business, their customers were thrown to the wolves. Their customers may not know at this point. In addition did any one read the fine print of the contracts they signed. It may be during an emergency you may not get the 12 or 15 cent electricity prices that were quoted. They may get to bump you to $9 like the Griddy customers did.

On Friday after the PUC order was removed electricity prices at about 10 am went from the artificial $9 a kwh to 2 cents a KWh because that was market at the time. Saturday I used 39.8 KWh and paid a total of 17 cents for power. Sunday I used 38.4 KWh and got paid 19 cents for using it.

The about 5 days last week cost me more than double my total yearly bill in 2020.

If I get any back, its going into a generator.

[03Lightningrocks]

I was told by someone who went to the ERCOT site that Houston and Dallas had the most percentage of customers with outages.

Where as San Antonio or Austin for example had a much lower percentage of customers who went without power. So it may be Centerpoint and who ever it is in Dallas, said "hey we will take the fall for this, shut us off"

Or maybe if your trying to reduce big useage in a hurry its easier to flip a big switch than lots of small switches.

Governor is holding up bills for customers. I think a lot of small cheap electricity providers went bankrupt part way through all this (because they couldn't pass on the $9 rates to their customers or could not borrow money until their customers paid them), when they went out of business, their customers were thrown to the wolves. Their customers may not know at this point. In addition did any one read the fine print of the contracts they signed. It may be during an emergency you may not get the 12 or 15 cent electricity prices that were quoted. They may get to bump you to $9 like the Griddy customers did.

On Friday after the PUC order was removed electricity prices at about 10 am went from the artificial $9 a kwh to 2 cents a KWh because that was market at the time. Saturday I used 39.8 KWh and paid a total of 17 cents for power. Sunday I used 38.4 KWh and got paid 19 cents for using it.

The about 5 days last week cost me more than double my total yearly bill in 2020.

If I get any back, its going into a generator.

I live in Plano, just north of Dallas. My daughter is on a TXU plan and I am on Sparkenergy, out of Houston for my provider. Thank god we are both on fixed rate plans. We were both out for the majority of time on Monday and Tuesday. My son is in Pearland out near Houston and they were down two days. It makes sense that they would just kill the areas with highest number of users. Many areas out away from the suburbs had power the entire time.

I could never pay a 17K bill, even with a "payment plan", LOL... so your payment would be 500 a month for three years? They have to help these people. Yeah, they gambled some with variable rates but nobody expected it to be that kind of gamble. Maybe a nickle a KWh or something...but my gosh! Even a two thousand dollar bill would be crazy in a house.

[srothstein]

I was told by someone who went to the ERCOT site that Houston and Dallas had the most percentage of customers with outages.

Where as San Antonio or Austin for example had a much lower percentage of customers who went without power. So it may be Centerpoint and who ever it is in Dallas, said "hey we will take the fall for this, shut us off"

As one difference to remember, San Antonio and Austin have city owned utilities and were not subject to the deregulation that allows you to choose your provider. Having lived under CPS service in San Antonio, I have no faith that they did something right unless the regulations required it. I support the free market concept used in Houston and Dallas, even though i know that deregulation was a misnomer and it is not a real free market.

[RoyGBiv]

I'm curious: If you have Griddy, does Oncor (or its equivalent) still have the option to cut your power, even though you're willing to pay spot prices for power? I ask this as a Direct Energy (and Oncor) customer who has been without power for over 50 hours and counting.

Yes, who generates your power has nothing to do with when you're provided power.

Correct.

Also worth noting that who you contract with to purchase your electricity is also often a separate entity from the company responsible for generating it.

TXU both generates electric and sells it to end users, distributed via a grid operated by a regulated grid provider (Oncor, for example). But Cirro, for example, is simply a bulk purchaser of electricity for resale to end users. Cirro owns no generation capacity. So if you are a Cirro customer, you might get power generated by TXU, sold in bulk to Cirro, delivered to you via the Oncor grid.

[ELB]

So the board of my electric company (Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative, GVEC) met yesterday and decided they will not raise the rate for now "at this time" although they did have to buy electricity at the $9 rate for awhile.

[flechero]

I could never pay a 17K bill, even with a "payment plan", LOL... so your payment would be 500 a month for three years? They have to help these people. Yeah, they gambled some with variable rates but nobody expected it to be that kind of gamble. Maybe a nickle a KWh or something...but my gosh! Even a two thousand dollar bill would be crazy in a house.

I feel terrible for people in that situation. OK having said that, I don't intend any of the following to be an attack, criticism, or affront to anyone, just my honest feeling about the matter....

A gamble is just that. If you can't afford to lose, you can't place the bet.

My wife and I had this exact conversation a while back. A nice guy would come by every 5-6 months and talk to me about changing to save a lot of money. We discussed worst case scenarios and he gave me the averages for events of the past and my wife dug up some research that was more similar to what happened last week. We decided that paying a bit more all the time beat being unable to pay even once, ever.

Sounds harsh, maybe but it's not fair to those who take responsibility for themselves to bail out those who don't. It's either paid for with my tax dollars or my future electric rates... so unless I get a $17,000 credit to apply going forward- I'm against it.

If you bail them out this time, they'll buy the cut rate plan again and look for the bail out next time as well.... sounds much like paying off student loan debts for all.



Maybe the real investigation should be into the spot pricing- multi-thousand % increases in a day or two smells fishy to me... maybe the honest rate is only a couple times normal and that's something people can pay off and learn from.

[03Lightningrocks]

I could never pay a 17K bill, even with a "payment plan", LOL... so your payment would be 500 a month for three years? They have to help these people. Yeah, they gambled some with variable rates but nobody expected it to be that kind of gamble. Maybe a nickle a KWh or something...but my gosh! Even a two thousand dollar bill would be crazy in a house.

I feel terrible for people in that situation. OK having said that, I don't intend any of the following to be an attack, criticism, or affront to anyone, just my honest feeling about the matter....

A gamble is just that. If you can't afford to lose, you can't place the bet.

My wife and I had this exact conversation a while back. A nice guy would come by every 5-6 months and talk to me about changing to save a lot of money. We discussed worst case scenarios and he gave me the averages for events of the past and my wife dug up some research that was more similar to what happened last week. We decided that paying a bit more all the time beat being unable to pay even once, ever.

Sounds harsh, maybe but it's not fair to those who take responsibility for themselves to bail out those who don't. It's either paid for with my tax dollars or my future electric rates... so unless I get a $17,000 credit to apply going forward- I'm against it.

If you bail them out this time, they'll buy the cut rate plan again and look for the bail out next time as well.... sounds much like paying off student loan debts for all.



Maybe the real investigation should be into the spot pricing- multi-thousand % increases in a day or two smells fishy to me... maybe the honest rate is only a couple times normal and that's something people can pay off and learn from.

I definitely can't argue that they didn't dig their own graves. I looked at variable rates as well but decided not to take the chance of taking a beating in case energy prices went up. I agree that maybe the rates they are claiming are over exaggerated. I know for sure that if I got a bill for anything close to 17 grand, I would be in serious trouble.

[MaduroBU]

I think that one's situation matters a lot. Let's take two folks: Person A rents a poorly insulated house in Wichita and has a heat pump/AC and an electric water heater. and has a young child. Persona B owns a house with a solar array, amazing insulation, and a natural gas generator. FWIW, Person is made up but probably pretty realistic and Person B is real. Person B won't notice if electricity stays at $9/kwh for a week. Person A will either stay with friends, freeze, or get a $17k electric bill.

I rent a 1950's ranch house in SW Houston. I spent a lot of time with my landlord, who lives next door, stuffing extra pink stuff in the attic and put insulation on all of the windows that don't face the street. I have a gas heater. I am required to be in the hospital during disasters. My situation is not ideal on its face, but I wound up with an extra $120 out of pocket from the storm and am still FAR ahead on griddy (ERCOT has been paying me to use electricity about 30% of the time since Saturday).

[philip964]

I was told by someone who went to the ERCOT site that Houston and Dallas had the most percentage of customers with outages.

Where as San Antonio or Austin for example had a much lower percentage of customers who went without power. So it may be Centerpoint and who ever it is in Dallas, said "hey we will take the fall for this, shut us off"

Or maybe if your trying to reduce big useage in a hurry its easier to flip a big switch than lots of small switches.

Governor is holding up bills for customers. I think a lot of small cheap electricity providers went bankrupt part way through all this (because they couldn't pass on the $9 rates to their customers or could not borrow money until their customers paid them), when they went out of business, their customers were thrown to the wolves. Their customers may not know at this point. In addition did any one read the fine print of the contracts they signed. It may be during an emergency you may not get the 12 or 15 cent electricity prices that were quoted. They may get to bump you to $9 like the Griddy customers did.

On Friday after the PUC order was removed electricity prices at about 10 am went from the artificial $9 a kwh to 2 cents a KWh because that was market at the time. Saturday I used 39.8 KWh and paid a total of 17 cents for power. Sunday I used 38.4 KWh and got paid 19 cents for using it.

The about 5 days last week cost me more than double my total yearly bill in 2020.

If I get any back, its going into a generator.

I live in Plano, just north of Dallas. My daughter is on a TXU plan and I am on Sparkenergy, out of Houston for my provider. Thank god we are both on fixed rate plans. We were both out for the majority of time on Monday and Tuesday. My son is in Pearland out near Houston and they were down two days. It makes sense that they would just kill the areas with highest number of users. Many areas out away from the suburbs had power the entire time.

I could never pay a 17K bill, even with a "payment plan", LOL... so your payment would be 500 a month for three years? They have to help these people. Yeah, they gambled some with variable rates but nobody expected it to be that kind of gamble. Maybe a nickle a KWh or something...but my gosh! Even a two thousand dollar bill would be crazy in a house.

Just understand, I gambled and agreed to a market rate and I am certainly willing pay that. However the PUC mandated a $9 rate for conservation purposes. I never agreed to pay an artificial mandated rate that the government set. As far as I am concerned I was given an illegal tax.

[03Lightningrocks]