In article , says...

Sure the average is something like 11.6 cents a kWh but it jumped to $90

https://theconversation.com/whats-be...n-texas-155822




I think it is capped at just $ 9 and hour instead of $ 90 per KWH from
what I read into that artical.

However even that is crazy. I could see it maybe jumping to close to a
dollar but not about 75 times as much.

Where I am at in NC I think my power is fixed at around 11 cents an hour
and that is including tax.

On 3/2/2021 6:08 PM, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article , says...

Sure the average is something like 11.6 cents a kWh but it jumped to $90

https://theconversation.com/whats-be...n-texas-155822




I think it is capped at just $ 9 and hour instead of $ 90 per KWH from
what I read into that artical.

However even that is crazy. I could see it maybe jumping to close to a
dollar but not about 75 times as much.

Where I am at in NC I think my power is fixed at around 11 cents an hour
and that is including tax.



Correct, i got an extra zero there but the wholesale was $9000 from
generators for megawatts


According to Reuters, the wholesale rate before this weeks storm was
only about $50 per megawatt-hour. On Wednesday, Texass Public Utility
Commission moved to cap wholesale prices at $9,000 per megawatt-hour, or
$9 per kilowatt-hour.

On 03/02/2021 10:54 AM, wrote:
On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 11:48:13 AM UTC-5, jimmy wrote:

Before Biden stole the election, gasoline was ~$2/gal. Yesterday I filled up at $2.76. ****in' democrats!

That's because of the problems in Texas, you dumbass. Anything that
even hints at a problem with the supply of gasoline will cause the price
to rise.

Cindy Hamilton


Crude prices have been rising long before the Texas freeze. The
expectation is the economy will start recovering from the covid
foolishness and increase demand.

Anything that hints at increased demand will cause the price to rise.

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 09:54:12 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 11:48:13 AM UTC-5, jimmy wrote:

Before Biden stole the election, gasoline was ~$2/gal. Yesterday I filled up at $2.76. ****in' democrats!

That's because of the problems in Texas, you dumbass. Anything that
even hints at a problem with the supply of gasoline will cause the price
to rise.

Cindy Hamilton

Texas, people crawling out of their Covid hole, still other some
stresses on production. Pretty soon they will be switching over to
summer blend.
That is regular stuff.
The wild card is what the democrats who hate oil do.

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 15:36:40 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 3/2/2021 3:03 PM, wrote:

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off, there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take that gamble,
they didn't learn much in all of those years. When people want
something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.

So what?
They wanted to be independent and they didn't want any stinking
regulations or anyone's opinion from east of Galveston.
Like I said to Trader. It is none of our business.
My bet is they still won't want any regulations.
Don't mess with Texas

On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 08:27:11 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:



wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 06:43:00 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 4:59:43 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 05:32:23 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 11:02:13 PM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 07:02:25 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 3:15:58 PM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 09:27:58 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 11:31:52 AM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:14:08 -0600, Jim Joyce

wrote:
On Fri, 26 Feb 2021 07:21:16 -0500, micky
wrote:

Somone on NPR's Morning Edition excplained that the water in
natural gas
is removed by the gas companies in the north, so thta it
won't freeze,
but they didn't do that in Texas, so it did freeze.

I suspect they're not set up to do it even if they wanted to.

In Texas, like you said, the natural gas distribution system
isn't
winterized. Likewise, the wind farms aren't winterized, which
led to Gov
Abbott's bizarre claim that wind energy stops working in cold
weather. I
guess someone should tell him that wind energy works just fine
in cold
weather if you take steps to make it so. There are plenty of
examples of
that around the world.

This isn't the first time the power grid partially collapsed
in Texas as a
result of cold weather. Just like before, recommendations get
made that
ERCOT should winterize their freaking equipment, but as
before, they've
said they won't do it because it costs too much.

I suppose the customers have a say in that because that cost
would
show up in their bill. These are cheap *******s and they might
still
say no assuming this won't happen again any time soon.
You just have to think of those people who tied their bill to
the
wholesale cost of power and got clobbered when the wholesale
price
skyrocketed.
Other places are willing to pay extra for better reliability.
We actually understand we pay a little extra on our bills here
in
Florida to cover storms. We had a "Storm Charge" on our bills
for
years after Charley and Wilma but the extra we paid in on the
regular
service charge was enough to cover the Irma damage so they
didn't need
to tack on an extra charge to cover the shortfall.

And of course, the Texas electric grid is separate from the
rest of
America, so they won't be regulated by the feds, but this
means they
also can't take electricity from the rest of the country when
they need
it, like last week. (Except for El Paso, which is connected
to the USA
grid and iiuc not the Texas grid. )

There are actually 3 electrical grids in the US: West, East,
and Texas.

Hence, no gas and no electricity.

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were
getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I
can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power
companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the
suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial
ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be
reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off,
there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it
or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger
solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge
totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that
day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market
with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they
got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican
state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually
commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have
never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you
have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities
market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much
delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric
disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the
regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many
elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take
that gamble, they didn't learn much in all of those years.

When people want something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

That's bull****. I have never been stupid enough to pay any
fee for a bank account, credit card etc etc etc and have
ended up so comfortably off that I havent even bothered
to do the paperwork to get the state aged pension etc.


That bank is making their money on your money. They are not a charity.

On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 18:08:25 -0500, Ralph Mowery
wrote:

In article , says...

Sure the average is something like 11.6 cents a kWh but it jumped to $90

https://theconversation.com/whats-be...n-texas-155822




I think it is capped at just $ 9 and hour instead of $ 90 per KWH from
what I read into that artical.

However even that is crazy. I could see it maybe jumping to close to a
dollar but not about 75 times as much.

There is something wrong with that $9 an hour cap story. That is $216
a day, You don't get $16,000 bills for that.

wrote in message
...
On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 08:27:11 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:



wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 06:43:00 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 4:59:43 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 05:32:23 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 11:02:13 PM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 07:02:25 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 3:15:58 PM UTC-5,

wrote:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 09:27:58 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 11:31:52 AM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:14:08 -0600, Jim Joyce

wrote:
On Fri, 26 Feb 2021 07:21:16 -0500, micky
wrote:

Somone on NPR's Morning Edition excplained that the water
in
natural gas
is removed by the gas companies in the north, so thta it
won't freeze,
but they didn't do that in Texas, so it did freeze.

I suspect they're not set up to do it even if they wanted
to.

In Texas, like you said, the natural gas distribution system
isn't
winterized. Likewise, the wind farms aren't winterized,
which
led to Gov
Abbott's bizarre claim that wind energy stops working in
cold
weather. I
guess someone should tell him that wind energy works just
fine
in cold
weather if you take steps to make it so. There are plenty of
examples of
that around the world.

This isn't the first time the power grid partially collapsed
in Texas as a
result of cold weather. Just like before, recommendations
get
made that
ERCOT should winterize their freaking equipment, but as
before, they've
said they won't do it because it costs too much.

I suppose the customers have a say in that because that cost
would
show up in their bill. These are cheap *******s and they
might
still
say no assuming this won't happen again any time soon.
You just have to think of those people who tied their bill to
the
wholesale cost of power and got clobbered when the wholesale
price
skyrocketed.
Other places are willing to pay extra for better reliability.
We actually understand we pay a little extra on our bills
here
in
Florida to cover storms. We had a "Storm Charge" on our bills
for
years after Charley and Wilma but the extra we paid in on the
regular
service charge was enough to cover the Irma damage so they
didn't need
to tack on an extra charge to cover the shortfall.

And of course, the Texas electric grid is separate from the
rest of
America, so they won't be regulated by the feds, but this
means they
also can't take electricity from the rest of the country
when
they need
it, like last week. (Except for El Paso, which is connected
to the USA
grid and iiuc not the Texas grid. )

There are actually 3 electrical grids in the US: West, East,
and Texas.

Hence, no gas and no electricity.

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were
getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem.
I
can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power
companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the
suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial
ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be
reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off,
there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with
it
or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger
solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge
totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that
day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market
with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities,
they
got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican
state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are
actually
commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have
never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in
a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you
have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the
commodities
market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is
not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much
delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric
disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or
Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the
regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many
elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take
that gamble, they didn't learn much in all of those years.

When people want something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

That's bull****. I have never been stupid enough to pay any
fee for a bank account, credit card etc etc etc and have
ended up so comfortably off that I havent even bothered
to do the paperwork to get the state aged pension etc.

That bank is making their money on your money.

Separate matter entirely to your stupid claim.

They are not a charity.

Duh.

On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 20:03:41 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread

Get the **** out of humans-only ngs, you abnormal trolling senile pest from
Oz!

--
Norman Wells addressing trolling senile Rodent:
"Ah, the voice of scum speaks."
MID:

On 3/2/21 12:54 PM, wrote:
On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 11:48:13 AM UTC-5, jimmy wrote:

Before Biden stole the election, gasoline was ~$2/gal. Yesterday I filled up at $2.76. ****in' democrats!
That's because of the problems in Texas, you dumbass. Anything that
even hints at a problem with the supply of gasoline will cause the price
to rise.

Cindy Hamilton


Gas prices are soaring but thank God there were no offensive President Trump tweets this week.

And now that your senile boy has killed the Keystone XL, prices will be sure to stay up.

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 12:54:16 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 11:48:13 AM UTC-5, jimmy wrote:

Before Biden stole the election, gasoline was ~$2/gal. Yesterday I filled up at $2.76. ****in' democrats!
That's because of the problems in Texas, you dumbass. Anything that
even hints at a problem with the supply of gasoline will cause the price
to rise.

Cindy Hamilton

I see estimates that TX is responsible for about half of the increase, but prices have
been rising for about two months.

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 3:04:00 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 06:43:00 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 4:59:43 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 05:32:23 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Sunday, February 28, 2021 at 11:02:13 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 07:02:25 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 3:15:58 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 09:27:58 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 11:31:52 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:14:08 -0600, Jim Joyce
wrote:
On Fri, 26 Feb 2021 07:21:16 -0500, micky wrote:

Somone on NPR's Morning Edition excplained that the water in natural gas
is removed by the gas companies in the north, so thta it won't freeze,
but they didn't do that in Texas, so it did freeze.

I suspect they're not set up to do it even if they wanted to.

In Texas, like you said, the natural gas distribution system isn't
winterized. Likewise, the wind farms aren't winterized, which led to Gov
Abbott's bizarre claim that wind energy stops working in cold weather. I
guess someone should tell him that wind energy works just fine in cold
weather if you take steps to make it so. There are plenty of examples of
that around the world.

This isn't the first time the power grid partially collapsed in Texas as a
result of cold weather. Just like before, recommendations get made that
ERCOT should winterize their freaking equipment, but as before, they've
said they won't do it because it costs too much.

I suppose the customers have a say in that because that cost would
show up in their bill. These are cheap *******s and they might still
say no assuming this won't happen again any time soon.
You just have to think of those people who tied their bill to the
wholesale cost of power and got clobbered when the wholesale price
skyrocketed.
Other places are willing to pay extra for better reliability.
We actually understand we pay a little extra on our bills here in
Florida to cover storms. We had a "Storm Charge" on our bills for
years after Charley and Wilma but the extra we paid in on the regular
service charge was enough to cover the Irma damage so they didn't need
to tack on an extra charge to cover the shortfall.

And of course, the Texas electric grid is separate from the rest of
America, so they won't be regulated by the feds, but this means they
also can't take electricity from the rest of the country when they need
it, like last week. (Except for El Paso, which is connected to the USA
grid and iiuc not the Texas grid. )

There are actually 3 electrical grids in the US: West, East, and Texas.

Hence, no gas and no electricity.

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off, there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.
If these people got to be elderly and decided to take that gamble,
they didn't learn much in all of those years. When people want
something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

Sure, no empathy as expected. The elderly fall prey to all kinds of scam artists,
dialing for dollars too. Call them up, sell them some dried food for the coming
civil war, $100 for a can of freeze dried bananas or $500 for a silver coin really
worth $5. Take their life savings. Nothing wrong there either, it's just the new
American values. Making America great again! Great for shysters, that is.

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 1:33:16 PM UTC-5, Jim Joyce wrote:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 06:43:00 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:
On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 4:59:43 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.
that were just ripped off by totally unethical shysters. Screw them, they
should have know their bills would go from $100, to $10,000.
Some cases were even worse, like this one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/u...ric-bills.html
His Lights Stayed on During Texas Storm. Now He Owes $16,752.

€œMy savings is gone,€� said Scott Willoughby, a 63-year-old Army veteran who
lives on Social Security payments in a Dallas suburb. He said he had nearly
emptied his savings account so that he would be able to pay the $16,752
electric bill charged to his credit card €” 70 times what he usually pays
for all of his utilities combined. €œTheres nothing I can do about it, but
its broken me.€�
That's the new
America, where lies and shysters prevail, screw whoever you can.
Next you can defend the companies collecting, putting the people out on the street,
becoming welfare cases so the taxpayers wind up paying for them.
More good Fretwell public policy.

He's nuts to have paid it, certainly at this point. On TV I say a similar case on TV
where they had it linked to their debit card and the money was pulled automatically,
all cleaned out before they even knew it. In fact it might be the same one, he could
have had his savings account linked to a debit account and they got the story
a bit mangled.

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 3:36:56 PM UTC-5, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 3/2/2021 3:03 PM, wrote:

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off, there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take that gamble,
they didn't learn much in all of those years. When people want
something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.

Follow the money. Where did it all go? What were the facts? We all know that
the actual cost to an energy generator could not be 100x the normal rate. So
who got it and how much of it was profit? They go after some mom and pop
gas station that raises the price of gas by $1 after a hurricane or a bodega that
doubles the price of a gallon of water from $1 to $2 using the gouging laws.
I've defended businesses being allowed to do the doubling kind of thing if they
want to. It encourages supply, motivates them to be open 24/7, extra hours,
to look for more supply. It encourages small entrepreneurs to load up a truck and
drive it to an area hit by a storm. I will defend that, but screwing electrical
customers with 100x bills, where they didn't even know what they were being
charged, is absurd and beyond anything within reason. Amazing that anyone
would defend it, but this is the new America. Stuff your pockets, screw everyone
else.

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 4:31:56 PM UTC-5, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article , says...
They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.


If the rates had gone up maybe 5 times it would not be too bad, but for
electricity to jump 100 times without warning is just not right.

Agree. And keep in mind, if it went up 5x for a few days, it would still not
have a huge impact on your bill for a month. If you had a $100 monthly
bill, that's $3 a day. If it went up 5x, that would be $15 a day for three days.
Let;s say that because of the cold weather, your usage went up 5x too.
That would be $75 a day for three days or $225. So you'd have a monthly
bill of ~$325. But they are getting bills for $10K, $16k



AS mentioned, I do not know anything about the TX system. Are there
several kinds of options such as paying a flat rate per KWH or like the
natural gas where you can take out contrct to pay so much per unit at a
certain time frame ?

It sounds like they have an arrangement like we do here in NJ. Our bills
come from the utility, JCPL, that has been the power company forever.
But the bill is in two parts, a charge for generation and a charge for delivery.
For generation JCPL used to be the only choice. Then maybe in the
90s regulators changed the scheme so that you could choose either JCPL
or other suppliers for the generation. Several companies started sending
mailings, offering you the option to switch to them for lower cost. I looked
at it a few times. Their energy costs were a little lower, but not enough
that it made a substantial difference. The rate here now is about 13 cents,
that's total, about half for delivery, half for the generation. So if JCPl was
at 6.5 cents for the generation, these other suppliers might have been at
5.5 cents. So your total cost would be 12 cents instead of 13, which isn't
much. I never switched because of concerns that it was only a small gain,
could go the other way, etc. But I can see some elderly living on SS where
$5 a month is significant to them and they switch. And the typical marketing
offer says something like save ten to fifteen percent on your energy costs.
People see that, don't realize that the energy cost is only half their bill,
so they think their $100 bill will go down to $85 or $90. In reality it would
go to $92 to $95, assuming the energy was cheaper and stayed there.
Those were the kinds of numbers I saw and decided it wasn't worth it.






It is often possible that many do not read or know how to read the fine
print in many contracts. Just as I have been trying to find out how
much cable and direct TV is. They show big numbers whre you can seen
them, then at the bottom of the page it usually just says 'for 6
months' or whatever but no price after that.

Yes and there should be some regulations that prevent what happened in TX.
I see the chowder head GOP governor just removed the requirement to wear
masks for the whole state. More brilliance, how many people will die from that?

On Wednesday, March 3, 2021 at 2:19:45 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 15:36:40 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 3/2/2021 3:03 PM, wrote:

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off, there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take that gamble,
they didn't learn much in all of those years. When people want
something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.
So what?
They wanted to be independent and they didn't want any stinking
regulations or anyone's opinion from east of Galveston.
Like I said to Trader. It is none of our business.
My bet is they still won't want any regulations.
Don't mess with Texas

Even if it's none of our business doesn't mean that it makes it OK or that we can't
speak out and have empathy for those that were screwed. Many of us have
basic human values and think it is our business to speak out when we see people
being abused and ripped off.

On Wednesday, March 3, 2021 at 7:05:57 AM UTC-5, jimmy wrote:
On 3/2/21 12:54 PM, wrote:
On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 11:48:13 AM UTC-5, jimmy wrote:

Before Biden stole the election, gasoline was ~$2/gal. Yesterday I filled up at $2.76. ****in' democrats!
That's because of the problems in Texas, you dumbass. Anything that
even hints at a problem with the supply of gasoline will cause the price
to rise.

Cindy Hamilton
Gas prices are soaring but thank God there were no offensive President Trump tweets this week.

And now that your senile boy has killed the Keystone XL, prices will be sure to stay up.

Texas wasn't shut down when Trump was president. I'm sure if you go back and look at
price charts you will find similar spikes during Trump's term due to hurricanes, etc.
Looks to me like half of the increase is traceable to TX. Prices were rising before that
and it could be a Biden premium being added in, because of the reaction to XL.
But XL itself didn't cause it directly, because no oil was flowing that was impacted.
But it's true that the markets respond to messaging too. We'll see where they are
in a month or two. But whatever the cost, I attribute it to the Trumpets like you.
Had we had a decent Republican candidate, a normal one instead of a nasty,
lying, divisive one, they would still be in office. Trump took the House and Senate
with him and the Republicans are still behind him, they want more.

On 3/3/2021 2:19 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 15:36:40 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 3/2/2021 3:03 PM, wrote:

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off, there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take that gamble,
they didn't learn much in all of those years. When people want
something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.

So what?
They wanted to be independent and they didn't want any stinking
regulations or anyone's opinion from east of Galveston.
Like I said to Trader. It is none of our business.
My bet is they still won't want any regulations.
Don't mess with Texas


I don't feel bad that they could not get help from the other grids,
shame on them. But to allow a scenario where some poor working slob now
has a $10,000 or $20,000 electric bill is unconscionable.

Look at the repercussions on a modest wage earner that suddenly has huge
debt because the utility commissioners thought is was ok. What does it
do to their kids?

Seriously, are you that big of a prick to just say "tough, deal with it"

Double? Triple? Sure. Thousand times? No.

writes:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 09:54:12 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 11:48:13 AM UTC-5, jimmy wrote:

Before Biden stole the election, gasoline was ~$2/gal. Yesterday I filled up at $2.76. ****in' democrats!

That's because of the problems in Texas, you dumbass. Anything that
even hints at a problem with the supply of gasoline will cause the price
to rise.

Cindy Hamilton

Texas, people crawling out of their Covid hole, still other some
stresses on production. Pretty soon they will be switching over to
summer blend.
That is regular stuff.
The wild card is what the democrats who hate oil do.

Don't be a fool. Nobody "hates" oil.

There is sufficient scientific evidence that burning fossil
fuels is bad for the environment, bad for health and dirty,
so it's hardly unexpected that reasonable folk would prefer
alternate supplies of energy. And, as it happens, leaving
aside ignorant floridians, most people are in favor of the
move towards cleaner energy supplies, whether it is nuclear,
wind, solar or hydro.

On 2/27/2021 11:31 AM, wrote:
On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:14:08 -0600, Jim Joyce
wrote:

On Fri, 26 Feb 2021 07:21:16 -0500, micky wrote:

Somone on NPR's Morning Edition excplained that the water in natural gas
is removed by the gas companies in the north, so thta it won't freeze,
but they didn't do that in Texas, so it did freeze.

I suspect they're not set up to do it even if they wanted to.

In Texas, like you said, the natural gas distribution system isn't
winterized. Likewise, the wind farms aren't winterized, which led to Gov
Abbott's bizarre claim that wind energy stops working in cold weather. I
guess someone should tell him that wind energy works just fine in cold
weather if you take steps to make it so. There are plenty of examples of
that around the world.

This isn't the first time the power grid partially collapsed in Texas as a
result of cold weather. Just like before, recommendations get made that
ERCOT should winterize their freaking equipment, but as before, they've
said they won't do it because it costs too much.

I suppose the customers have a say in that because that cost would
show up in their bill. These are cheap *******s and they might still
say no assuming this won't happen again any time soon.
You just have to think of those people who tied their bill to the
wholesale cost of power and got clobbered when the wholesale price
skyrocketed.
Other places are willing to pay extra for better reliability.
We actually understand we pay a little extra on our bills here in
Florida to cover storms. We had a "Storm Charge" on our bills for
years after Charley and Wilma but the extra we paid in on the regular
service charge was enough to cover the Irma damage so they didn't need
to tack on an extra charge to cover the shortfall.


And of course, the Texas electric grid is separate from the rest of
America, so they won't be regulated by the feds, but this means they
also can't take electricity from the rest of the country when they need
it, like last week. (Except for El Paso, which is connected to the USA
grid and iiuc not the Texas grid. )

There are actually 3 electrical grids in the US: West, East, and Texas.

Hence, no gas and no electricity.

There were tanks at the heads of all the gas wells I had seen in PA.
Crews would come in weekly or so to pump out these tanks which I assume
contained water and higher molecular weight hydrocarbons.

On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 10:18:31 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 3/3/2021 2:19 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 15:36:40 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 3/2/2021 3:03 PM, wrote:

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off, there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take that gamble,
they didn't learn much in all of those years. When people want
something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.

So what?
They wanted to be independent and they didn't want any stinking
regulations or anyone's opinion from east of Galveston.
Like I said to Trader. It is none of our business.
My bet is they still won't want any regulations.
Don't mess with Texas


I don't feel bad that they could not get help from the other grids,
shame on them. But to allow a scenario where some poor working slob now
has a $10,000 or $20,000 electric bill is unconscionable.

Look at the repercussions on a modest wage earner that suddenly has huge
debt because the utility commissioners thought is was ok. What does it
do to their kids?

Seriously, are you that big of a prick to just say "tough, deal with it"

Double? Triple? Sure. Thousand times? No.

At a certain point I understand there is not much we can do about it
from here Texas chose to be independent and they reap what they sow.
I don't feel sorry for crack whores and death row inmates either. They
made their choice, now live with it.

On Wed, 03 Mar 2021 15:39:43 GMT, (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

writes:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 09:54:12 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 11:48:13 AM UTC-5, jimmy wrote:

Before Biden stole the election, gasoline was ~$2/gal. Yesterday I filled up at $2.76. ****in' democrats!

That's because of the problems in Texas, you dumbass. Anything that
even hints at a problem with the supply of gasoline will cause the price
to rise.

Cindy Hamilton

Texas, people crawling out of their Covid hole, still other some
stresses on production. Pretty soon they will be switching over to
summer blend.
That is regular stuff.
The wild card is what the democrats who hate oil do.

Don't be a fool. Nobody "hates" oil.

There is sufficient scientific evidence that burning fossil
fuels is bad for the environment, bad for health and dirty,
so it's hardly unexpected that reasonable folk would prefer
alternate supplies of energy. And, as it happens, leaving
aside ignorant floridians, most people are in favor of the
move towards cleaner energy supplies, whether it is nuclear,
wind, solar or hydro.

First you say you don't then you explain why you do.

writes:
On Wed, 03 Mar 2021 15:39:43 GMT, (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

writes:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 09:54:12 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 11:48:13 AM UTC-5, jimmy wrote:

Before Biden stole the election, gasoline was ~$2/gal. Yesterday I filled up at $2.76. ****in' democrats!

That's because of the problems in Texas, you dumbass. Anything that
even hints at a problem with the supply of gasoline will cause the price
to rise.

Cindy Hamilton

Texas, people crawling out of their Covid hole, still other some
stresses on production. Pretty soon they will be switching over to
summer blend.
That is regular stuff.
The wild card is what the democrats who hate oil do.

Don't be a fool. Nobody "hates" oil.

There is sufficient scientific evidence that burning fossil
fuels is bad for the environment, bad for health and dirty,
so it's hardly unexpected that reasonable folk would prefer
alternate supplies of energy. And, as it happens, leaving
aside ignorant floridians, most people are in favor of the
move towards cleaner energy supplies, whether it is nuclear,
wind, solar or hydro.

First you say you don't then you explain why you do.


You are confused about what the word "hate" means, it seems.

Prefering one alternative over another doesn't imply hatred,
but rather you're imputing something that doesn't exist.

On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 06:51:03 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 4:31:56 PM UTC-5, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article , says...
They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.


If the rates had gone up maybe 5 times it would not be too bad, but for
electricity to jump 100 times without warning is just not right.

Agree. And keep in mind, if it went up 5x for a few days, it would still not
have a huge impact on your bill for a month. If you had a $100 monthly
bill, that's $3 a day. If it went up 5x, that would be $15 a day for three days.
Let;s say that because of the cold weather, your usage went up 5x too.
That would be $75 a day for three days or $225. So you'd have a monthly
bill of ~$325. But they are getting bills for $10K, $16k



AS mentioned, I do not know anything about the TX system. Are there
several kinds of options such as paying a flat rate per KWH or like the
natural gas where you can take out contrct to pay so much per unit at a
certain time frame ?

It sounds like they have an arrangement like we do here in NJ. Our bills
come from the utility, JCPL, that has been the power company forever.
But the bill is in two parts, a charge for generation and a charge for delivery.
For generation JCPL used to be the only choice. Then maybe in the
90s regulators changed the scheme so that you could choose either JCPL
or other suppliers for the generation. Several companies started sending
mailings, offering you the option to switch to them for lower cost. I looked
at it a few times. Their energy costs were a little lower, but not enough
that it made a substantial difference. The rate here now is about 13 cents,
that's total, about half for delivery, half for the generation. So if JCPl was
at 6.5 cents for the generation, these other suppliers might have been at
5.5 cents. So your total cost would be 12 cents instead of 13, which isn't
much. I never switched because of concerns that it was only a small gain,
could go the other way, etc. But I can see some elderly living on SS where
$5 a month is significant to them and they switch. And the typical marketing
offer says something like save ten to fifteen percent on your energy costs.
People see that, don't realize that the energy cost is only half their bill,
so they think their $100 bill will go down to $85 or $90. In reality it would
go to $92 to $95, assuming the energy was cheaper and stayed there.
Those were the kinds of numbers I saw and decided it wasn't worth it.

My friends in Round Rock, a suburb of Austin, told me they were directed to
https://www.comparepower.com when power deregulation came to their area.

I went there just now and entered 78664 as the Zip Code, which is one of
the Round Rock Zip Codes. At a casual glance, they don't seem to make it
easy to see which of the 66 available plans are primarily based on passing
the wholesale spot price directly to the consumer. I see things like free
nights and weekends, but no bold text that says your cost could increase by
10,000% on a day to day basis. I assume it's in there somewhere but I can
see why people would bail out of the fine print before getting thru it all.

I lived in a suburb of San Antonio and we didn't have deregulation there.
According to the comparepower.com site, they still don't have it there.
Many of my friends from there have told me they lost power and suffered
frozen pipes, but at least they didn't see $10k-$17k electric bills.


It is often possible that many do not read or know how to read the fine
print in many contracts. Just as I have been trying to find out how
much cable and direct TV is. They show big numbers whre you can seen
them, then at the bottom of the page it usually just says 'for 6
months' or whatever but no price after that.

Yes and there should be some regulations that prevent what happened in TX.
I see the chowder head GOP governor just removed the requirement to wear
masks for the whole state. More brilliance, how many people will die from that?

It's the Texas way. Figure out the right thing to do, then do something
else.

On Thursday, March 4, 2021 at 4:00:35 AM UTC-5, Jim Joyce wrote:

My friends in Round Rock, a suburb of Austin, told me they were directed to
https://www.comparepower.com when power deregulation came to their area.

I went there just now and entered 78664 as the Zip Code, which is one of
the Round Rock Zip Codes. At a casual glance, they don't seem to make it
easy to see which of the 66 available plans are primarily based on passing
the wholesale spot price directly to the consumer. I see things like free
nights and weekends, but no bold text that says your cost could increase by
10,000% on a day to day basis. I assume it's in there somewhere but I can
see why people would bail out of the fine print before getting thru it all.

Why would you expect the "fine print" to be at www.comparepower.com?

The fine print is in the contract that one signs with the provider.

I see that comparepower.com gets paid by the utilities for referring
customers to them. That makes the utilities their customers and
consumers are their product.

Cindy Hamilton

On Wednesday, March 3, 2021 at 3:44:21 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 10:18:31 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 3/3/2021 2:19 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 15:36:40 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 3/2/2021 3:03 PM, wrote:

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off, there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take that gamble,
they didn't learn much in all of those years. When people want
something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.

So what?
They wanted to be independent and they didn't want any stinking
regulations or anyone's opinion from east of Galveston.
Like I said to Trader. It is none of our business.
My bet is they still won't want any regulations.
Don't mess with Texas


I don't feel bad that they could not get help from the other grids,
shame on them. But to allow a scenario where some poor working slob now
has a $10,000 or $20,000 electric bill is unconscionable.

Look at the repercussions on a modest wage earner that suddenly has huge
debt because the utility commissioners thought is was ok. What does it
do to their kids?

Seriously, are you that big of a prick to just say "tough, deal with it"

Double? Triple? Sure. Thousand times? No.
At a certain point I understand there is not much we can do about it
from here Texas chose to be independent and they reap what they sow.
I don't feel sorry for crack whores and death row inmates either. They
made their choice, now live with it.

Now you equate consumers, including the poor and elderly, ripped off by
evil profiteers in the midst of an energy crisis, to crack whores and death row
inmates. Fits right in with your continual defense of Trump as he said and did one
horrible thing after another. Values matter. Over the last four years, sadly America
has lost of lot of it's values and it's not clear when, if ever, we will recover.

On Thursday, March 4, 2021 at 4:00:35 AM UTC-5, Jim Joyce wrote:
On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 06:51:03 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:
On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 4:31:56 PM UTC-5, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article , says...
They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.


If the rates had gone up maybe 5 times it would not be too bad, but for
electricity to jump 100 times without warning is just not right.

Agree. And keep in mind, if it went up 5x for a few days, it would still not
have a huge impact on your bill for a month. If you had a $100 monthly
bill, that's $3 a day. If it went up 5x, that would be $15 a day for three days.
Let;s say that because of the cold weather, your usage went up 5x too.
That would be $75 a day for three days or $225. So you'd have a monthly
bill of ~$325. But they are getting bills for $10K, $16k



AS mentioned, I do not know anything about the TX system. Are there
several kinds of options such as paying a flat rate per KWH or like the
natural gas where you can take out contrct to pay so much per unit at a
certain time frame ?

It sounds like they have an arrangement like we do here in NJ. Our bills
come from the utility, JCPL, that has been the power company forever.
But the bill is in two parts, a charge for generation and a charge for delivery.
For generation JCPL used to be the only choice. Then maybe in the
90s regulators changed the scheme so that you could choose either JCPL
or other suppliers for the generation. Several companies started sending
mailings, offering you the option to switch to them for lower cost. I looked
at it a few times. Their energy costs were a little lower, but not enough
that it made a substantial difference. The rate here now is about 13 cents,
that's total, about half for delivery, half for the generation. So if JCPl was
at 6.5 cents for the generation, these other suppliers might have been at
5.5 cents. So your total cost would be 12 cents instead of 13, which isn't
much. I never switched because of concerns that it was only a small gain,
could go the other way, etc. But I can see some elderly living on SS where
$5 a month is significant to them and they switch. And the typical marketing
offer says something like save ten to fifteen percent on your energy costs.
People see that, don't realize that the energy cost is only half their bill,
so they think their $100 bill will go down to $85 or $90. In reality it would
go to $92 to $95, assuming the energy was cheaper and stayed there.
Those were the kinds of numbers I saw and decided it wasn't worth it.
My friends in Round Rock, a suburb of Austin, told me they were directed to
https://www.comparepower.com when power deregulation came to their area.

I went there just now and entered 78664 as the Zip Code, which is one of
the Round Rock Zip Codes. At a casual glance, they don't seem to make it
easy to see which of the 66 available plans are primarily based on passing
the wholesale spot price directly to the consumer. I see things like free
nights and weekends, but no bold text that says your cost could increase by
10,000% on a day to day basis. I assume it's in there somewhere but I can
see why people would bail out of the fine print before getting thru it all.

Exactly. I was looking at Medicare Advantage plans online. Joe Namath
is on TV hawking them. One of the selling points is that they provide for
free meals at home and dental coverage. None of the plans I looked at
disclosed what the free meals were all about. And I'm talking about looking
at the plan details online, which are like 12 page summaries. You have to
download the "evidence of coverage" PDF sort through it to find it. I wasn't
looking for the meal thing, but happened to stumble upon in in that 70 page
document. Turns out the free meals is two meals a day for a week if you
come home from the hospital and need it. That's not a bad benefit, but it's
not fairly presented on TV and not in the 12 page plan details either.

Dental, there is some major shystering going on. I found an Aetna plan that
unlike the others, covers restorations and extractions. They sure point that
out in the 12 page summary. Again you have to download the EOC PDF
go look there to find that dental is capped at $250 a year. Meanwhile other
plans cover 50% of dental, capped at $2000 and do present it upfront.



I lived in a suburb of San Antonio and we didn't have deregulation there.
According to the comparepower.com site, they still don't have it there.
Many of my friends from there have told me they lost power and suffered
frozen pipes, but at least they didn't see $10k-$17k electric bills.

Hopefully they didn't suffer damage from the pipes. On TV they were showing
people with houses flooded. Obviously those folks didn't have some basic
knowledge. I would have hoped that the TX govt would have put out a message
warning people, telling them that if they think they have water pipes anywhere
that could freeze, they should turn off the water, open all faucets, etc.
But knowing TX, maybe the governor was too busy appearing on Fox to blame
windmills and working on removing all mask requirements, all capacity limits,
so that Covid can kill more people. And I'm sure Fretwell will weigh in and say
that it's just the people;s own faults, no need for govt to do anything. to warn
them.




It is often possible that many do not read or know how to read the fine
print in many contracts. Just as I have been trying to find out how
much cable and direct TV is. They show big numbers whre you can seen
them, then at the bottom of the page it usually just says 'for 6
months' or whatever but no price after that.

Yes and there should be some regulations that prevent what happened in TX.
I see the chowder head GOP governor just removed the requirement to wear
masks for the whole state. More brilliance, how many people will die from that?
It's the Texas way. Figure out the right thing to do, then do something
else.

+1

In article ,
says...

Exactly. I was looking at Medicare Advantage plans online. Joe Namath
is on TV hawking them. One of the selling points is that they provide for
free meals at home and dental coverage. None of the plans I looked at
disclosed what the free meals were all about. And I'm talking about looking
at the plan details online, which are like 12 page summaries. You have to
download the "evidence of coverage" PDF sort through it to find it. I wasn't
looking for the meal thing, but happened to stumble upon in in that 70 page
document. Turns out the free meals is two meals a day for a week if you
come home from the hospital and need it. That's not a bad benefit, but it's
not fairly presented on TV and not in the 12 page plan details either.

Dental, there is some major shystering going on. I found an Aetna plan that
unlike the others, covers restorations and extractions. They sure point that
out in the 12 page summary. Again you have to download the EOC PDF
go look there to find that dental is capped at $250 a year. Meanwhile other
plans cover 50% of dental, capped at $2000 and do present it upfront.




Seems that just about everything has too much small print to go with the
big print. About 15 years ago I bought a house that was about 20 years
old. The real estate agent wanted me to get a home warrenty. After I
looked it over I could not see that it covered very much and a few years
of payments would cover what it did pay.


A few years ago my wife was in the hospital and when she came home I got
a call about a few things such as the meals. If she was alone, it would
have helped, but I can do the basic cooking so we declined it. They did
sent a physical therists out 2 time a week for several weeks to help her
learn how to walk around and do exercises to help her.


Been trying to find out how much the Direct, Dish and Cable systems cost
after the large print, but even after looking it over, I still can not
tell, but I am not wasting lots of time trying to.

On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 07:29:26 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Wednesday, March 3, 2021 at 3:44:21 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 10:18:31 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 3/3/2021 2:19 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 15:36:40 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 3/2/2021 3:03 PM, wrote:

Something is obviously very wrong when customers in TX who were getting $100
electric bills got bills for $10K because of the power problem. I can't even
begin to imagine that happening. You would think the power companies would
say hold those bills, let's work on this. Then go back at the suppliers, saying
this is nuts, we expect some increased costs, even substantial ones, but
$100 to $10K? And they should have told those suppliers to be reasonable,
fix it or we're going public to identify who's ripping you off, there will be
multiple investigations and it's unlikely you'll get away with it or even do
business in America again by the time it's over. But the bigger solution
would be some regulatory caps so that suppliers can't charge totally insane
and unjustifiable prices. Even if they built a new plant that day, it would
not justify those prices.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Those customers were playing the electrical commodities market with
the big boys and like most amateurs who get into commodities, they got
****ed.

I guess it's too much to expect that regulators in a Republican state would
prevent utilities being marketed as utilities when they are actually commodities
that can skyrocket by a factor of a hundred overnight. BTW, I have never
seen any commodity do that, increase by two orders of magnitude in a
day or two, not even in a month, ever. Nothing even close. If you have an example,
I sure would love to see it. I guess that's because the commodities market
is regulated and shysters can't easily pull such a stunt.
Bear in mind Bill Clinton signed the legislation that treated the
derivatives markets as commodities so seeing disasters happen is not
unprecedented.
I don't know of a commodity in particular that has had that much delta
in a day but I don't play the commodities game., It is certainly
possible tho.

It's never happened, nothing even remotely close and the TX electric disaster
has nothing to do with the commodity markets, derivatives, or Clinton.
It has to do with a lot of stupid in TX, including some
really glaring things, like the four ERCOT board members, the regulators,
who resigned. They didn't even live in TX. Or was it 6? But heh,
according to the Republican governor, it was wind mills that were the
problem. According to another Republican, windmills cause cancer.
Stupid is as stupid does.

Nobody put a gun to their head and told them to play the electrical
wholesale game. There were plenty of normal utility options open to
these people but they just got greedy. There are 3d party options for
who you buy your power from all over the country. It just comes with a
warning that this is not a regular utility deal. A few people ignored
the warnings.
Sometimes you just have to let the baby touch the stove.

Yes, no surprise you have no empathy for consumers, including many elderly,
and people of modest means who don't know any better.

If these people got to be elderly and decided to take that gamble,
they didn't learn much in all of those years. When people want
something for nothing they often end up with nothing.

They could have got their electricity from a conventional utility if
they wanted a safe contract.

This is far beyond not safe. I'm sure many of these people knew there
was a risk but there is no justification for $100 bills becoming $10,000
with little or no notice. None. Totally immoral.

Show me where this has happened and where it would be considered "normal
risk" or even a high risk.

So what?
They wanted to be independent and they didn't want any stinking
regulations or anyone's opinion from east of Galveston.
Like I said to Trader. It is none of our business.
My bet is they still won't want any regulations.
Don't mess with Texas


I don't feel bad that they could not get help from the other grids,
shame on them. But to allow a scenario where some poor working slob now
has a $10,000 or $20,000 electric bill is unconscionable.

Look at the repercussions on a modest wage earner that suddenly has huge
debt because the utility commissioners thought is was ok. What does it
do to their kids?

Seriously, are you that big of a prick to just say "tough, deal with it"

Double? Triple? Sure. Thousand times? No.
At a certain point I understand there is not much we can do about it
from here Texas chose to be independent and they reap what they sow.
I don't feel sorry for crack whores and death row inmates either. They
made their choice, now live with it.

Now you equate consumers, including the poor and elderly, ripped off by
evil profiteers in the midst of an energy crisis, to crack whores and death row
inmates. Fits right in with your continual defense of Trump as he said and did one
horrible thing after another. Values matter. Over the last four years, sadly America
has lost of lot of it's values and it's not clear when, if ever, we will recover.

The only ones who got ripped off were the ones who signed up for a
very risky plan to save a short term buck. Due diligence would have
had them looking at regularly.
http://mis.ercot.com/misapp/GetReports.do?reportTypeId=12328&reportTitle=DAM%2 0Hourly%20LMPs&showHTMLView=&mimicKey
When they deregulated power here I was inundated with offers from fly
by night companies all over the country offering a huge but undefined
discount. I just said no. It was easy.
I understand people do dumb stuff in hopes of a big payoff but if they
didn't that Nigerian Prince would never be able to get that $174.5
million out of his country. He needs your help. Just do what those
Griddy people did, let him have your R/T number.

BTW have you noticed how close that name is to "Greedy"?
Coincidence? I don't think so.