[TulliusCicero]

> But the retailer could have been more proactive to say "During terrible winter storms, paying the market rate is a bad idea. Switch companies now."

I thought they did exactly that? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-15/texas-pow...

> One power supplier, Griddy, told all 29,000 of its customers that they should switch to another provider as spot electricity prices soared to as high as $9,000 a megawatt-hour. Griddy’s customers are fully exposed to the real-time swings in wholesale power markets, so those who don’t leave soon will face extraordinarily high electricity bills.

> “We made the unprecedented decision to tell our customers -- whom we worked really hard to get -- that they are better off in the near term with another provider,” said Michael Fallquist, chief executive officer of Griddy. “We want what’s right by our consumers, so we are encouraging them to leave. We believe that transparency and that honesty will bring them back” once prices return to normal.

[WaylonKenning]

One problem is when an event like this happened in New Zealand, other retailers didn't accept new customers at this time. I mean, would you accept new customers paying 20 cents a kWh when the market rate is 500 cents a kWh?

[brianwawok]

And that is the age old problem. People sign into a "deal" contract to save $5 now, but with a 1/1000 chance of someday losing $1000. And then they hit the spike and what happens?

a) Extra charge is forgiven?

b) Someone else picks up the tab?

c) They are stuck paying it?

And how do you deal with this big picture?

a) Require better legal language in the contracts to sign up for this

b) Ban these kind of contracts, because the user isn't "smart" enough to know how they work

Similar things happen in a floodplain where no one will issue flood insurance. It's mostly fine, until it isn't.

[WaylonKenning]

That's where I think things like Tesla's Powerwall becomes so handy. Imagine 95 kWh just sitting there on your wall. Or in your Model-S. When there's an adverse power event, use your battery. Or, sell it back to the grid if there's money to be made.

Having a massive virtual peaker plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant) is a neat idea. Telsa, another new business idea for you!

[brianwawok]

What sucks is powerwall cost $7.5k for 6.5 kWh of storage. A decent sized house is going to need 2-4 to handle a reasonable outage, and if you want to be able to power an AC.

My Model Y has a 75 kWh of battery just sitting in my garage, and S/X owners have 100 kWh (maybe 90 after refresh?). Really wish Teslas could use a vehicle to grid to somehow tie into a homebase powerwall for this kind of situation. My understanding is there is no inbuilt way to get more than what is needed to charge the 12V out of a Tesla...

[AtlasBarfed]

Well, the banks do this as a part of business, knowing the US will bail them out when their insider trading house of cards crash down.

Flood insurance for a house purchase is very different from a afterthought utility bill that, really, you have no "choice" on procuring.

[brianwawok]

Wait, but you did have a choice in picking this utility bill. Your choice was:

a) (default choice): Use as much power you as you want, 12c a kWh, it never changes.

b) (other supplier choice): Pay market rate! Currently only 9c a kWh, save 3c per kWh! (Until this event, when it went to $1000 a kWh).

Consumer opted into B to save some cash, but got hit with the downside of their bet.

[Spooky23]

...and somehow everyone is surprised that consumers do a bad job at assessing risk.

It’s an unconscionable business model with no guardrails. Commercial users don’t sign up for rates like that without breakers or hedges.

[brianwawok]

And commercial users tend to be more sophisticated.

So then we just ban users from such programs?

(I don't know the answer, but this ends up down a pretty strict path of not letting you hurt yourself).

[TulliusCicero]

In this case the regulated/government-run provider was an option I think.