I'm honestly having trouble ginning up as much sympathy as I should for some of these folks with high electricity bills. Some of them didn't understand what they were signing up for, and were probably just told that it was cheaper, but many knew exactly what they were doing. They just didn't think they'd get caught. I know someone on a fixed rate contract in TX, she's had friends over the years point out that they are paying less for their electricity than she is with their variable rate contract. But who wants to play the market with their electricity bill? In a regulated world, maybe such plans shouldn't be allowed, or anyone who signs up for it should sign some kind of waiver stating that they understand that electricity prices can go WAY up and they have no control over it. But come on. They want to take advantage of the low rates a variable contract offers when they're low, but not be responsible when they go high? How does that work? The only mitigating factors, to me, are 1) I suspect many people didn't understand what they were signing up for, and 2) really? We're going to go this far with deregulation? They can just up the price to whatever they want? I mean, clearly they can.
Texans with variable-rate electricity contracts could be paying astronomical prices for power right now
Fixed-rate customers with power could see retail providers offering incentives for them to cut back.
HOUSTON — If you’ve been lucky enough to have power these past few days, you need to take a look at your electric contract.
If you’re on a variable-rate plan, you could be looking at an enormous bill at the end of the month.
But if you have a fixed-rate contract, your retail provider may be trying to get you to leave, or at least cut back.
When you sign a contract with an electricity provider, you get two options: a fixed-rate plan or a variable-rate plan.
The fixed-rate plan locks you into a set price per kilowatt hour of electricity.
A variable-rate plan charges you based on the current wholesale price of power, where supply and demand determines the rate.
This week’s extremely cold weather increased customers’ demand, while at the same time, generators lost the ability to provide the supply.
“That’s right. It’s a lot like shorts and puts in the stock market,” said Fred Anders who runs the website texaspowerguide.com.
He says the price of power went from 3 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour, to as much as 900 cents per kilowatt hour.
“For the average home in Texas, it translates to roughly $450 a day if they didn’t curtail their usage at all,” Anders said.
But for customers on fixed-rate plans who never lost power, it was the opposite.
Their retail electric providers still had to provide power for them which cost hundreds of times more than the fixed rate in the contracts.
https://www.khou.com/article/news/local ... 6952e277b1
All one has to do to not get screwed is to choose *not* play the market with their electricity bill.