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HWR_14yesterday at 2:16 PM4 repliesview on HN

And then a storm hits texas and without realizing it you run up a $30,000 electricity bill in a single night of not freezing.


Replies

londons_exploreyesterday at 2:39 PM

This only happens if a small percentage of people have live pricing. If most people have live pricing, most people have an incentive to act on price changes - for example by turning the heating off in unused rooms to save money.

In turn, that means that at times of crisis, prices will be high, but not 1000x high.

Gasoline is another resource with live pricing, and suggesting "I want a subscription where I pay $3 per gallon fixed for a year, no matter how much I use and no matter what happens to the price of oil" wouldn't be something a fuel station would entertain, because they know that when the price was under $3 you'd buy elsewhere, and when the price was over $3 you'd buy millions of gallons and resell at a profit.

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maxericksonyesterday at 2:37 PM

The whole gimmick with that supplier was that they exposed their customers more or less directly to grid pricing. You don't need to do that to charge different prices during different parts of the day.

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reactordevyesterday at 4:13 PM

TX is its own energy grid so - that’s what you get for being “The Lone Star”

Seriously though this was a huge issue a couple years ago with the freezing and blizzards that hit Texas.

oldpersonintxyesterday at 2:50 PM

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