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PrincessLeiasCat ,

If they don’t have fixed rate, they’re in a pickle.

Source: sadly live in Texas

HoustonHenry ,

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

dandroid ,

I live in Texas. Our electricity delivery is quite complicated. I moved here from California where our only choice was to have PG&E or no power. We paid what they told us to pay, and we said, “thank you.” It was simple. But in Texas, you have different choices for power companies. Where I live, I have about a dozen or so choices for companies, and each one has multiple pricing schemes. So you could have a pricing scheme that is a flat rate, or you could have ones that have time-based tiers, or usage tiers, etc. I’m sure someone offers a pricing scheme that roughly follows the market prices, but honestly you’d be dumb for choosing that one. Most people go with tiered usage ones because they appear to be the lowest prices. So you pay based on how much you use, but the more you use, the more you pay.

I have solar panels, and when choosing a power plan that works best for that, I did see many that purchased your excess power based on the market price. Usually it was like some percentage of the market price, not 100%. However I ended up going with a time-based pricing scheme where my power is free between 9 PM and 7 AM, as my solar panels and batteries cover me for the rest of the time. I essentially pay nothing for power, and I have an electric car, electric dryer, and electric oven.

hperrin ,

I live in California, and I’ve been on SDG&E, PG&E, and SoCal Edison, and they all work the same as what you’re describing, with multiple different pricing schemes depending on usage and hours. Wherever you live in California, you usually only have one company to choose from, but I’ve never had only one plan to choose from. Maybe you lived in a very niche part of California, but that’s definitely not how it works in San Diego County, Riverside County, Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, or Alameda County.

As far as solar, that’s the same everywhere. My dad is on SDG&E, and he sells his solar back to the grid when he doesn’t use full capacity.

In my thirty six years in California, I’ve experienced a handful of blackouts. The last one was in 2012. How often does Texas have blackouts? I remember most of the state going dark just a few years ago. And now again. It may not be all of the state, but it’s enough that it’s newsworthy.

RubberElectrons ,
@RubberElectrons@lemmy.world avatar

Same, stuck with tiered on SCE and it worked reliably and at reasonably low cost.

Burn_The_Right ,

I live in Texas and lose power for more than a day 2-3 times a year. It’s July and I’ve already lost power (for more than a day) at least 3 times this year so far. Generators are extremely common here. Newcomers learn that lesson the hard way.

Sometimes it’s only out for a day and sometimes it’s out for 10 or more days. Power companies don’t do preventative maintenance in Texas because power companies are unregulated here. It is more profitable for them to wait for something to fail and slowly fix it rather than replace what hasn’t broken yet.

In fact, power companies base their trade pricing on availability, so widespread outages are extremely profitable for them, as they can claim there are shortages where there are not. There is no mechanism to prevent this. And since the governor’s campaign is paid millions of dollars a year by power companies, they are in control of their own “oversight”.

As long as conservatives are in charge in Texas, this cannot improve. It can only become worse.

WeirdGoesPro ,
@WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Before a few years ago, we basically never had major backouts. That snowpocalypse really kicked things off.

Cort ,

With free power overnight, do you charge the batteries up to full before 7AM?

dandroid ,

I don’t. When I installed my solar panels and batteries there was a stipulation that if I charge my batteries from the grid, I don’t get a tax rebate. Essentially they gave me $10,600 USD for me to not do that. If they catch me doing it, I would need to pay that back. However there is an exception for inclement weather. If there is a severe thunderstorm, fire, etc. in my area, my batteries are automatically charged from the grid.

Cort ,

Well that’s pretty reasonable. I figured there was some sort of restriction

scytale ,

By living in an area that has a regulated utility provider. One of the primary requirements I have when choosing a place to live is to make sure the utility provider in the area is a regulated entity.

Donebrach ,
@Donebrach@lemmy.world avatar

I find it highly unlikely that a human being is deciding their living situation based on whether or not their utility provider is regulated.

scytale ,

Well I did, so shrug I guess I’m an outlier. My home search was very limited to one county so I could make sure we were covered by that city’s resources. Besides, I didn’t say it had to be the only reason. Just answering OPs question on how people live with those private unregulated utilities, which I did by avoiding them altogether.

massacre ,

That’s the neat thing! They don’t.

Thorny_Insight ,

What’s so neat about it?

OhStopYellingAtMe ,
@OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world avatar

sarcasm

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

It’s a meme

Donebrach ,
@Donebrach@lemmy.world avatar

Donebrach deleted their comment :(

Triasha ,

Most of us don’t pay the market price hour to hour. Our electricity provider absorbs the risk of price spikes and raises our rates if the math stops working for them.

Griddy was a provider that sells at the market rate, which is usually below the general price you would pay, but you take the risk of price spikes during peak demand.

Kaboom ,

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

frunch ,

Griddy

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2364fc2a-0fef-4999-891a-035827b65a21.jpeg

cloud_herder , (edited )

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.

Thorny_Insight ,

I live in Finland and me like a large number of other Finns have a plan in which the price changes every hour according to the market price. Typical price for electricity is around 4c/kWh in the summer and around 15c/kWh in the winter. However it’s not uncommon at all for the price to spike into 30c/kWh or even 70c/kWh. Last winter there was a day that it spiked to 200c/kWh.

How do we deal with it? By turning down/off the heating if possible and burning wood instead. If not then you just deal with it and have to pay significantly more for a few months. Then again if your plan has a fixed price to like 10c/kWh then that also mean you’re paying that even when the price drops to zero which also is not uncommon at all. Often happens several times a week during the summer time. Sometimes it even goes into negative. It’s still not literally free though since the transfer cost is around 6c/kWh plus energy fee and taxes.

chaosmarine92 ,

How do you keep up with the current price? Does your thermostat have a setting where if the price is above X then turn off? Do you just come home to a freezing house and say “oh the electric is too expensive, guess I’ll grab some wood”?

Thorny_Insight ,

I check sahko.tk in the evenings to see if it’s going to be particularly expensive the next day. This is mostly in the winter time, at summer I hardly pay any attention to it. They usually warn people in the news too for the handful of really expensive days in a year. Depending how high it gets I might turn off the heating for the peak hours but generally not because it doesn’t really make that of a big difference as the prices average out over a long period of time. Some people have automatic thermostats that turn off the heating after the electricity price passes a certain limit. My water heater for example is set to go on during the night when electricity is at its cheapest.

chaosmarine92 ,

Are the predicted prices ever crazy far off from what they actually end up being like what happened in Texas last winter? Where am outage causes price to go from like 20c/khw to 2000c/khw over a one hour period?

Thorny_Insight ,

No, the prices are decided about 24 hours in advance and they don’t change after that.

GreyEyedGhost ,

Seems like a pretty sane way to handle market pressures, rather than, “I hope nothing terrible happens and my bill is suddenly thousands of dollars.”

z00s ,

So it costs you more when it costs more to produce, but when it’s free to produce it still costs you money.

Love corporations

Thorny_Insight ,

No… First of all: electricity is never free to produce. Running a powerplant costs the same no matter what price the electricity is at. The price goes to zero when supply greatly overceeds demand. That means I’m not paying to the electric company for the electricity but I’m still paying for the company that maintains the grid to deliver that electricity to me. It doesn’t just magically hop from the powerplant to my house.

Triasha ,

I thank my lucky stars to be in San Antonio where we have municipal power.

People complain about CPS (city public service) but we get a say in how the company is run and our bills are quite reasonable compared to the state average.

regdog ,

They don’t

Pacattack57 ,

We have contracts like everyone else. No one pays the day by day rate.

Zron ,

Then what’s the point in having a day by day rate?

TheGalacticVoid ,

It’s the same reason why the fed controls interest rates. Entities higher up the chain deal with those volatile costs so we don’t have to.

TexMexBazooka ,

Because that’s what the electric company is paying, and if it stays high our contracts go up next year

Etterra ,

I’d be shocked that anyone puts up with this, but then I remember how the healthcare system “works.”

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