I can just pray my bills away? Neat!

Close but not correct.

It’s an established marketplace, where legislated “middlemen” buy from the utilities and then sell to the consumer.

You can’t actually buy directly from the utility generating the power without going through the marketplace.

It is sold as a “free market” that would drive competition and keep prices down. In actuality, it just allows leaches, who don’t actually produce anything, to sit in the middle and suck money out of the economy.

Sure some of them will lose money, while others will make a billion, but the system works just fine as a regulated controlled monopoly.

Texas is a perfect example of Republican hypocrisy. The Governor, Lt Governor, State AG, etc… are quite literally the worst kind of politicians.

I seriously dislike Sheila Jackson Lee, but I feel bad about her situation.

I would laugh if that wheel chaired, piece of shit rolled off a cliff.

I would laugh if Dan Patrick caught on fire.

On second thought, I might use Ken Paxton to put out the fire, by that I mean, push him onto Dan, hoping he would catch on fire too.

Shit, that went a lot darker than I intended.

Texas; where people with power make extra money for specifically not doing good enough.

I’m certainly feeling owned right now. Ouch!

If it’s Republicans, it’s legal.

Generally the ones that are on those plans are the most vulnerable. I’ve got a fixed TXU plan. The up front cost of being on it was a couple of hundred bucks because I had bad credit at the time. The pay as you go variable rate places don’t have that up front cost and when it’s not peak times they’re significantly cheaper.

Unfortunately they don’t always let people know in time when the rates spike. So these vulnerable people don’t even realize they should be turning shit off or they’re not home to do it or it’s a heat wave/ice storm where they could just fucking die if they turn off climate control.

It’s been a fucking mess down here in Houston. My electricity came up pretty quickly and I was able to head west and grab a hotel for a night so I didn’t get heat stroke. I’m lucky. I was able to come back and eat the brisket I smoked before Beryl came through (I’m a stereotype, sue me). But there are people who still don’t have electricity in this fucking weather and there are others who have to decide between their fridge and their AC.

I’m drunk, bitter, and pissed off tonight. So I’m gonna ramble.

I’ve done lots of tech projects within the retail energy industry in Texas - this is the right answer.

To expand a little bit:

Retail energy providers (REPs), like NRG, ClearSky, Just Energy, etc. make their money by forecasting the amount of energy that will be needed as far in advance as possible and purchasing that amount from power generators like CenterPoint and marking it up a few cents. The farther out, the cheaper they can get it. I’ve helped build forecasting engines for a few that ingest historical usage data from meters (all meters in Texas are smart meters), weather data, and others to use machine learning to forecast how much individuals will need and aggregate it together to help the energy traders make better informed trade decisions farther out.

If they mess up or an unforeseen event happens and they don’t have enough energy bought for that time segment (forgot the term for a window of time they use), they have to go to the spot market which is where the prices fluctuate and can be many many multitudes higher than the rate the customers are contracted to pay.

In a storm scenario or a freeze, it can be thousands of times more expensive because demand is so high and supply is so limited. This is when REPs go bankrupt if they don’t have the cash on hand.

There are also insurance plans that the REPs pay for that cover very specific conditions for different types of events or outages that can kick in to cover the huge costs they would otherwise incur on their own buying electricity at that spot rate. I’ve known a few that were only able to stay operating because someone a few years prior had bought an insurance policy that covered said weather event.

Griddy died because of the ice storm in Texas a few years ago and the huge costs people incurred. I actually met with their CIO the year prior as part of a technology assessment of their stack. Nice guy.

Edit: also you can largely thank Enron and Rick Perry for deregulating Texas’ energy - which directly led to the terrible “performance” of the Texas grid during the winter storm Uri in 2021. Same for Enron in the constant blackouts in California in the early 2000’s.

Griddy

Thank you! So much misinformation floating around, its ridiculous.

Yeah, they’ll happily send you a bill without fixed rates as soon as they can

A big part of that is it’s all state owned. Having private companies in charge of something as vital and important as energy infrastructure is just pure folly imo.