Griddy is/was an electricity retailer that sold at wholesale prices to customers. The cold front in texas lead to extremely high prices. This impact has been most evident for Griddy users who did not reduce their energy usage. There have been many news reports about people with $9k or $16k energy bills.
Griddy is a very small part of the market and didn’t make any additional profit from the raised prices but all the same they have had a lot of press.
Griddy sold people on cheaper overall prices by essentially bypassing most utility company's models in which higher prices are paid over time to hedge against extreme swings in demand. You pay a higher price because the utility fronts the risk if costs to acquire more power go to the moon.
Griddy allowedpeople to pay lower wholesale rates when times were good at the cost of beimg along for the ride if things ever went off the rails like they did last week.
Texas actually has some fairly generous consumer protection laws for things like these 5 figure power bills, so Griddy will likely not be able to recoup their losses from keeping the power going for their customers.
Interesting. I wonder if their customers that didn’t pay their insane bills get to walk away now debt free if Griddy folded or if they’ll sell the debts pennies on the dollar to collectors (whom they’ll be free to ignore).
Griddy is a very small part of the market and didn’t make any additional profit from the raised prices but all the same they have had a lot of press.