Posted on 03/17/2021 8:20:45 AM PDT by Theoria
The third and last remaining commissioner of the Texas utilities regulator resigned under pressure on Tuesday after the release of comments to investors vowing to protect utility profits and dismissing financial hits from a cold snap on municipal power companies.
The resignation came soon after the disclosure of inflammatory comments by the Public Utility Commission Chair Arthur D’Andrea in a March 9 call with Bank of America utilities’ analysts. The call took place two days before he was to consider rescinding billions of dollars payment to utilities.
His stance against repricing helped sink a proposal this week to cut $4.1 billion from charges in the final hours of a deadly February blackout. The regulator and state grid operator raised power prices to about 400 times the normal rate over five days. But they left the pricing in place for 32 hours after the emergency passed, spurring state officials to call for a partial repricing.
On the March 9 call, D’Andrea told investors and analysts he had “tipped the scale as hard as I could” to prevent repricing and would keep “the weight of the commission” against it, according to a recording of the call published Tuesday by Texas Monthly magazine on its website.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
D’Andrea needs to re-examine his priorities.
So tone deaf.
Governor Greg Abbot put him and all the others on the PUC board.
Greg Abbot is a freaking idiot.
There are utility companies in Texas that offer flexible pricing which offers very low if not almost free electricity when demand is low. Those customers should have understood the other side of that equation.
Those Texans will be on the hook for power prices that at times spiked 9000 per cent.
This is why I spoke out against this plan. The people pushing it said prices would decline. Instead they jumped to near the top in the US. Only way to fix it is to pull it out by its roots.
Greg Abbott bankrupted innocent companies:
Griddy made no money from any electricity sold. It merely passed on the real time pricing to its customers, for a flat fee of $10/month.
Greg Abbott forced fake real time pricing for 90 hours. That fake pricing was an add-on to the real real time pricing. In the latter hours, the real real time pricing was $0.30/Megawatt hour, but the adder was “$8,999.70.” Divide those by 1,000 to get the Kilowatt hour equivalent.
Greg Abbott defends those who illegally wrongly say repricing cannot occur, because, due to its charter, that is EXACTLY what is supposed to happen.
Greg Abbott is an idiot.
The PUC forced ERCOT to fake the pricing. That should never have happened. It was faked for 90 hours.
In the last hours, the price per Megawatt hour was well under $1.00. Abbott forced the price to read “$9,000.00” and then refused to adjust after the fact, as the PUC is supposed to do.
There were no true real time prices for 90 hours.
How readily is that pricing ($ per kWhr) available and known to the electrical (homeowner or business) consumer when he turns on a light or his electrial furnace or water heater? If it changes, how is such notification made to the consumer at that moment?
Or is it like after you filled your gas tank at the pump, you are told the price per gallon of the gas you used (which could be anywhere from $3.00 to $300 per gallon)?
That's why I never get variable rates. While you might pay a little less during low demand, there is essentially no cap to the potential cost. It is very similar to selling short in the futures market. You have some potential gains, but effectively unlimited liability. No thanks.
Those consumers should have read their contact with their utility company.
The less PUC, ERCOT, state and federal interference the better for the consumer.
Enron2.
People made billions speculating on a disaster.
It’s simple math and those Texans should have understood the math.
The lowest price can only go as low as zero, the pricing ceiling does not exist and can be any price.
Those Texans should have read the fine print.
How readily is that pricing ($ per kWhr) available and known to the electrical (homeowner or business) consumer when he turns on a light or his electrial furnace or water heater? If it changes, how is such notification made to the consumer at that moment?
If you would avoid a conflict of interest, don’t have one.
These people are up to their ears in conflicts of interest.
OG&E is claiming they need to recover $1 billion in gas expenses from their rate payers. Somebody should look at where they actually sold power that the $1 billion produced. I bet they would find a lot of it was sold opportunistically and the cost has already been recovered.
OG&E owns the Oklahoma Corporation Commission just like the utilities own the PUC anc bureaucrats own the appraisal boards all across the nation.
People do what they know and are comfortable with. Politicians are only good at being politicians, on everything else they are ignorant fools out of their depth.
“The PUC forced ERCOT to fake the pricing.”
Then the PUC and should not exist, and consumers should read their contracts with utilities.
We were supposed to have fixed pricing since we generate our own hydro power just up the road. But then our bill came and it was nearly double.
We were using alternative heat (propane and kerosene) to keep the house nice and toasty during the outages. There was no need to suddenly use extra watts to heat the already warm house. So, how in blazes was the bill so high, huh? Thieves!
Also, there was no need for any blackouts here. Our subdivision has around 90 houses but those are mostly tourist rentals. There are only 6 houses with full time residents. If the power company can generate enough power to all those houses during tourist season with a/c running full blast to compensate for 110 degree summer heat then they can certainly power 6 houses during a freeze.
Multiply that by the countless other subdivisions with weekend rentals. No freakin’ way should we have been short of power. In fact, they were opening flood gates to send water down stream to help with those hydro plants.
Big fat liars and thieves.
“It’s simple math and those Texans should have understood the math.”
Except many (or most) do not, and they get to vote. Same thing for loans - hold out ‘free money’ and people will grab it, and then worry about the terms later, when they see an auction notice on their front door.
That’s why we used to require people to have some degree of brians to vote...but not no more.
A market designed by market Participants.
Protocols written by market Participants.
Protocols approved by the political driven PUCT.
What could go wrong?
It did.
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