Texas, 'He Is Lying. People Are Dying'

#901
#901
hog88 said:
I would call the co-op but my $ per KWH isn't variable. It's constant and we are notified in advance (at least 30 days) of any increase.
Click to expand...
Ok so yeah then that is another difference. It confuses people who move here. Frankly it confuses us also as you can see in all the media swirl.

While we are on a variable rate don’t assume ours moves any real amount either. We just aren’t on a long term plan it’s “month to month” pricing and yeah they notify of rate increases.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AM64
#902
#902
LouderVol said:
Did the commodity system replace the local utilities? Or are they something you opt in to?
Click to expand...

Our system is extremely simple - pretty much what hog already described. The local power distributor buys power from TVA. We are charged a set rate by KWH used. The local utility "owns" and services equipment. Rate hikes as far as I know all have to be approved by regulators - we don't see rate changes often. Natural gas is the one that seems to be basically unregulated and variable; it's not even local these days - the address changed to Atlanta, and if you mail in a bill it goes to IL. When our gas furnace died, I went to a heat pump. Gas heat was probably still cheaper, but there was a lot of new gas demand for electric power generation, so rates were on the rise. I opted for what was regulated rather than what people thought the market would bear when they knew they had customers (victims) with gas appliances, water heaters, and furnaces over a barrel.

Deregulation and competition always sound great; but in the end suppliers continue to merge and the competitive angle doesn't work. What we practice in this country (perhaps it's really worldwide) is destructive competition - the kind of competition that tries to destroy or force mergers of competitors rather than competition driving better products and favorable prices.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Weezy and Smokey X
#903
#903
NorthDallas40 said:
If you’re asking about the wholesale pricing resellers that’s a choice. We aren’t with one.
Click to expand...
So yeah, people got hosed by their own choices. If the wholesale pricing was the only game in town I could understand people wanting the utility system instead. But it sounds like they had a choice and chose poorly.
 
#904
#904
LouderVol said:
So yeah, people got hosed by their own choices. If the wholesale pricing was the only game in town I could understand people wanting the utility system instead. But it sounds like they had a choice and chose poorly.
Click to expand...
Yeah but to be fair most consumers don’t have the information base or judgment to understand the exposure. I could see from the pricing that it was subject to short term high variability and told the wife flat out no we would never get on one of those plans.

But I never imagined it could reach these levels.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Smokey X
#906
#906
NorthDallas40 said:
Yeah but to be fair most consumers don’t have the information base or judgment to understand the exposure. I could see from the pricing that it was subject to short term high variability and told the wife flat out no we would never get on one of those plans.

But I never imagined it could reach these levels.
Click to expand...
Ignorance on their part on information others in their position could is not an excuse. Again this is just like college payments. Not understanding the ramifications is not excuse to not face them.
 
  • Like
Reactions: hog88
#907
#907
LouderVol said:
Ignorance on their part on information others in their position could is not an excuse. Again this is just like college payments. Not understanding the ramifications is not excuse to not face them.
Click to expand...

Bailing out people that made stupid decisions equals votes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 82_VOL_83
#909
#909
LouderVol said:
Ignorance on their part on information others in their position could is not an excuse. Again this is just like college payments. Not understanding the ramifications is not excuse to not face them.
Click to expand...
I don’t disagree. Like I said I wasn’t putting our family in that position as I could see situations where the variability could spike.

So yes they did it to themselves and signed a contract. They are on the hook. However as a utility there is a certain failure in oversight of those product offerings that I think it’s a tad disingenuous to not acknowledge that’s all.
 
#911
#911
So finally got the gas bill which covered the Texas Ice Age. $257 and the cost per cu ft was the same it’s always been. So the electric bill was virtually unchanged and the gas bill was up due to usage only.

So if people had a price spike it’s because they CHOSE a plan which allowed that to happen.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SlipKidVol, Rasputin_Vol and Orangeburst
#914
#914
Velo Vol said:
Time to blame the windmills again.

ERCOT Calls On Texans To Conserve Power Amid High Summer Demand, Forced Outages
Click to expand...
Troll fail. We now have a warm snap while we have generation offline for repairs before summer peak load. But you do you tweet boy. And this place doesn’t disappoint I was wondering which fool was gonna drop this 🤡

“High electricity demand is adding to the pressure on the grid, as cities across Texas expect temperatures in the 90s or higher this week. The state broke its June electricity demand record Monday, with Texans pulling over 70,000 megawatts of electricity from the grid.”
 
#918
#918
Rasputin_Vol said:
$28 billion/17 years = $1.6 billion/year

$1.6 billion/26 million customers = $63.34/per customer/year

$63.34/12 months = $5.27/ per customer/month...

So $5.27 per month more per customer is what we are talking about here?
Click to expand...
And this is for something they opted in to of their own free will. And it doesnt cover any of the potential savings people have seen from the same deregulation.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Wireless1
#921
#921
DrRosenRosen said:
Strange. Power was working just fine at Six Flags, the other amusement parks, and hotels I visited in Texas this past weekend. 95+ every day.
Click to expand...
And you probably won’t notice any difference. ERCOT routinely sends out requests to conserve power during peak demands this is nothing new. Once you get past the fear porn in the article title linked you’ll notice they don’t expect any blackouts. They are merely notifying the customer base of usage pushing max capacity and to please conserve where you can.

Right now we have a fairly large number of our natural gas plants offline for scheduled maintenance before peak summer demand. Some of this is related to the February incident where they are still doing maintenance catch-up. And like I linked above from the article we saw the highest single usage day recorded on Monday for June.

I figured one of the resident dumbasses would trip over themselves to conflate this and I wasn’t disappointed
 
  • Like
Reactions: McDad, Rasputin_Vol and Wireless1
New posts
You must log in or register to reply here.

VN Store



Back
Top