Hell no! Some Griddy folks are going to get whacked.

Every customer signs an agreement, just like a variable rate mortgage.

I knew exactly what I was signing up for, I know exactly what I've agreed to, and I know what the risks are. Normal grownup stuff. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, if you can't be bothered to setup home automation to take advantage of the dips, while avoiding the peaks, and you really can't tolerate extreme volatility, then you should be on a fixed rate contract - and let somebody else (the smart people at your REP) handle it all for you.

And I was more than prepared for it. This doesn't faze me. Barely blipped my radar.

BTW, as I'm typing this, the rate is -$0.019. It was -$0.032 about an hour ago. Not a typo - the wholesale price is negative.

It's never gone negative enough for that to happen. I still pay Texas New Mexico Power (the TDU) a fixed $0.049/kWh. The most expensive in the state.

Can't shop the poles and wires around.

Right now, I have a smart thermostat that I've programmed (with IFTT integration) to kill the A/C or heat pump when the wholesale price exceeds $0.06/kWh. Note: I'm able to get away with this and remain comfortable, because my house is incredibly energy efficient. It takes a loooooong time for the temperature in my house to approach ambient temp outside. My heat pump shut off on the 15th at 2am, and didn't come back on until the 18th at 4am. During that entire time, the lowest my house got was 50F. And it was -2F outside for a while.

I'm currently in the planning stages for a van build (fun project - I'm going to turn a RAM Promaster into a mobile office/bedroom/kitchen so I can bomb around Texas when I get bored working at home, and get paid for it). As part of that, I'm designing the electrical system - which will include solar panels and around 600Ah of storage. That means an inverter, supplemental ways of charging the batteries (generator, second alternator on the vehicle), etc. Given all that's just happened, I've also decided that storing energy here at the house isn't a terrible idea, either. It's the same basic idea, just at a much larger scale than a van. Ultimately, and it shouldn't be that difficult for me, I should be able to just keep the banks of batteries charged when it's cheap (and frequently the price goes negative), and then use automation to just switch the house over to the batteries when the wholesale price crosses a certain threshold. Done properly (and it will be), it'll be completely automated and I won't even have to think about it.

Honestly, even with the limited shit I've done so far, it's worked well. My A/C and heat pump is what uses all the power. My lighting is all LED, my dishwasher (including the cost of the water and the detergent - I'm that much of a nerd) is all of $0.025 a load. We don't use an assload of hot water, and the tank is wrapped pretty well. If electricity is sky high (and it rarely is), I don't run the dryer.

Normal load for my house - minutes the A/C or heat pump - averages about 1.5 kWh/hour. That's without any sort of attempt at energy conservation. Lights, Keurig machine, espresso maker that I never turn off, computer/network gear in my rack, laptops, desktops, phones, tablets, TVs, ceiling fans, stove/oven, microwave, water heater, washer, dryer, refrigerator, chest freezer...

On Friday, it averaged about 2.9kWh/hr for the day with the heat pump on full chooch, bringing the thermal mass of the house and everything inside it back up to 70F. On Thursday (with power restored, but still at $9/kWh) I had the power down to an average of about .3kWh/hr. That was accomplished by nearly shutting the house down - no coffee makers, game consoles, DVRs, TVs, lights left on, etc. The biggest power draw there, was honestly my router, PoE switch, cable modem, NVR, APs and security cameras. Important stuff, to a nerd.

I could seriously run my entire house off a 3kW Honda inverter generator, if I don't run the A/C. For heat, a single kerosene heater will absolutely warm my house (again - very well insulated. I borrowed a Mr Heater BIG Buddy and a couple of 20 lbs tanks, and was able to bring the entire house up to 68F with that one heater running on medium in the middle of the house). For cooking, I would just do what I did during the outage - cook on my portable countertop propane and butane burners.

There isn't really a bill, as such. You fund an account balance with your credit card, and it's drawn down daily. When your account balance gets down to around $20, they automatically "recharge" it with whatever credit card you have on file with them. The recharge amount is whatever you want. In my case, it's $200. But I can make it whatever I want. Normally, $200 is enough to last me a 5 or 6 weeks.

You have full transparency, if you decide to avail yourself of it. The real-time spot price changes every 5 minutes (you can see it in their app, or even just gank it yourself directly from ERCOT if you want to go full nerd with it - that's all Griddy is doing). None of this caught me by surprise. But I knew what I was getting into.

2/10: $4.53 <-- Pretty normal this time of year, when it's cold and my heat pump is running a lot.
2/11: $40.66 <-- Shit's starting to go south
2/12: $39.81 <-- Hmm. Gonna be a little spendy this month.
2/13: $178.01 <-- Oh, shit son!
2/14: $246.80 <-- Faaaaaawk. 60F thermostat and some sweaters will do.
2/15: $95.68 <-- If my power didn't go out, I would have thrown the breakers anyway.
2/16: $0
2/17: $0
2/18: $390.95 <-- Damn the torpedoes, power is back and I want some hot water and about an hour of 75F sauna in here. Fuck it - I have the money banked, from all those months when it was dirt-ass cheap.
2/19: $101.62 <-- It's either this or burn borrowed propane that I can't refill on account of everybody being out.
2/20: (I'll know the final total later today, but it'll be fuck-all)

None of the REPs are seeing a windfall (Griddy for example only makes $10/mo per customer - everything else is passed straight through). The TDU's aren't seeing a windfall, as near as I can tell - the PUC sets their rate fixed (mine is $0.049/kWh).

Some of the generators might be, though. And it was the PUC that ordered the price adders to $9,000/MWh. The actual spot price being traded was WAY below that, for most of it.

2/20: $0.63 <-- Everybody complains when the price is high, nobody celebrates and/or banks the savings when it's nearly fuckin' free. Except me, apparently.

Yup. Those people shouldn't be buying their electricity the way I do. And most don't - Griddy has all of 29,000 customers in the entire state. There are ~7.3M households in Texas, and Lord knows how many commercial customers. This isn't really affecting 99% of them. The 1% are just being really loud about it, aided by an advertiser-driven media that relies on raw traffic for income.

Nerding out on basic utilities isn't something normal or sane people do.

But for those of us who enjoy experimenting with that sort of thing (because we're sick in the head), I'm going to be REALLY pissed off if somebody in elected office tries to save me from myself. They need to fuck right off. I'm not a victim. I don't need their help, and I'm not asking.