Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tedunangst 1939 days ago
A company getting blown up by counter party risk doesn't sound like regulation. That's the free market at work.
1 comments

It's not exactly the free market when ERCOT fixes the price.

https://www.griddy.com/post/griddy-update-why-energy-prices-...

See the big image midway through the article.

What would the spot price have been in a no regulation, no price cap, no blackout market?
It literally doesn't matter if custumers can't afford to pay the fixed price, much less the "true" price. And they can't.
> much less the "true" price.

?

I'm not trying to claim that prices didn't naturally rise by a lot, but in that particular situation (linked above), it's very clear that a lot of customers were paying $9/kWh when they could have paid $0.03/kWh. The latter is obviously easier to afford.

This event sucked for griddy customers, no doubt. But for the state of Texas and ERCOT to lock the price 300x higher than it would otherwise be is ridiculous.