[Analemma_]

I disagree completely. This business model should never have been allowed to exist, in the same way and for the same reason that "almost fully self-driving cars" should not be allowed on the roads: humans are just not capable of quickly and correctly responding in situations where 99.99% of the time no input is required and once in a blue moon you have to act immediately to avoid disaster.

Good riddance.

[myself248]

I would love the opportunity to sign up for this, if and only if they could send me some test messages so I could make sure my load-shedding scripts work.

The opportunity to engage more directly with the market would be cool and useful for folks with the technical chops to participate appropriately. And if everyone's smart appliances and bitcoin miners could actually cut themselves off with price spikes, _the grid would be healthier for it_.

I think of it like self-insurance. If you have the financial resources to weather the foreseeable eventualities, you can forego many traditional types of insurance. However, you have to prove that you have the money in the bank.

In this case, there was nobody checking that these wholesale customers had the technical chops to meaningfully participate in the wholesale market. THAT is the problem. The market should exist, but just like you can't register a car without either normal insurance or proving your self-insurability, you shouldn't get electrical service without either paying normal consumer rates or proving your ability to play the wholesale game.

[Rebelgecko]

Griddy seems like it would be a win-win for people with solar panels and decent battery storage

[nrmitchi]

Or people who knowingly, and flexibly, use a large amount of power.

[jasonjayr]

Do they do net-metering down in TX ?

[freeone3000]

Better. Retail price in Texas depends on time-of-use, so you're paid more per kWh for the electricity you net-generate during the day than the electricity you net-use during the night.

[dragonwriter]

Of course, once enough people do it, peak price time moves out of solar-generating-but-home-use-low time (see, e.g., California.)

[bpodgursky]

The only way other electric companies would be able to eat the difference between retail and wholesale rates would be to overcharge for years, hoard cash, and then pay out that buffer during this crisis. Presumably, this is what they did.

Doesn't actually seem better for consumers?

[freeone3000]

Except during events like this, that people are not and cannot be prepared for. Griddy going out of business is nothing -- if someone else wants to take up the business model, they can tomorrow. Individual people being charged thousands for debts difficult to discharge is the real harm.

[nrmitchi]

That's an interesting point actually.

For one, I suspect that ERCOT wouldn't allow a new company with this model access to the grid immediately, at least until this blows over a bit.

But regarding "thousands in debts"; I'm curious how that will be handled. It seems that these are debts to Griddy, but Griddy no longer exists, apparently for non-payment, which implies that ERCOT does not expect to be paid. Do these customers now owe this debt to ERCOT directly?

[dragonwriter]

> Griddy no longer exists

Griddy is shutting down. They exist for the moment, the debt they are owed is an asset, and even if they are dissolved their assets will be sold off to pay their creditors, so someone will be owed the money.

[nrmitchi]

The customer debt from this can be sold off, but you might be lucky to get a penny-on-the-dollar for it.

[dragonwriter]

Maybe, because it's going to (on average) be hard to collect. But the debt doesn't go away automatically or get reduced, it goes to whoever paid that penny...

(Now, if that's John Oliver [0], maybe it also gets forgiven, but that's not the usual case...)

[0] https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/john-oliver-buys-15...

[bpodgursky]

But on net, people _would_ be better off having taken the savings from Griddy and stuck it in the bank. Consumers aren't losing money overall in the Griddy model -- it's just happening at once.

The other providers can only survive (assuming they do) by having overcharged for years.

[salawat]

That wasn't overcharging. They had infrastructure costs to meet.

I mean, I could be wrong, I"m not a CPA with their books in front of me... But I cannot see running a power network as anything but expensive.

Now whether they imvested properly or not, that remains to be seen. The fact that arlt least we didn't totally lose everything shows it wasn't all for naught.

[fastball]

Pro-tip: if the rates are really high, stop using so much power.

What happened to personal responsibility?

[supertrope]

Many customers requested a supplier switch but could not get it to execute for days.

[totalZero]

Seems a lot better for consumers in my book. Like having insurance on a car.

[austhrow743]

Almost fully self driving cars are physically dangerous to others. Whether or not you think people should be allowed to bankrupt themselves speculating on wholesale energy prices; it’s an entirely different situation.

[salawat]

Not really. You're just gambling/risk taking in a different way. It's like a waterbed. Push down the risk in one place, pops up in another.

[fastball]

How am I impacted if some random person can't pay their energy bills because they used a lot of power when the prices were high?

Meanwhile getting run over by a semi-autonomous vehicle is a fairly direct consequence of such things.