On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 5:11:50 PM UTC-5, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 3/1/2021 4:52 PM, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article ,
says...

How can there be an electric charge of one weeks of power that exceeds
abot 3 times what it should be for a year ?

Deregulation.

Simply put, as the supply of electricity approached zero, the price of electricity
approached infinity.

Cindy Hamilton



Looks like that should somehow come under the price gouging laws. Where
if due to some disaster prices can not rise much above the normal price
range.

I read that under certain circumstances there is a legitimate huge price
jump that comes into play, the idea is to get people to cut use. I've
not follow it closely though so don't know the details.

Why have electricity prices increased in Texas?
As the storm caused temperatures across the state to plummet early last
week, the utility commission ordered ERCOT to allow prices to increase
to reflect the lack of supply. As a result, electricity prices
skyrocketed. ... Texas utility regulators allowed that price to rise to
$9 per kilowatt-hour.

The obvious question is who got all that money and how much profit did they
make? If it's 2x, 3x the usual price, I can see that as the consequence to get
more power, but 100x? The power sure didn't cost the provider anything like
that to generate it. It's funny, there are laws and regulators that jump on some
poor SOB selling a generator for double the price or gasoline for double, but this
apparently they had nothing to prevent. Guess the windmills did it.