A couple things. From what I understand, in Texas they use a system where electricity retailers bid on power from the producers in real-time. These bids run every 5 minutes. When they had problems producing power, the companies selling the power had to put increasingly rediculous bids in order to get some of the limited power available, prices peaked at around $7 per kwh (normally around $0.14 per kwh) I think that most people, given a choice between paying $7 a kwh and not getting any power, will choose to pay the higher price. My mom has been without power for over a week now because of freezing rain in Oregon taking out power lines. Some of them were taken out by tree limbs breaking off due to the weight of the ice, but some power lines broke simply because the ice on the power lines was too heavy. She's pay about $100 a week to run a generator to keep the heat on and run the fridge and occasionaly heat some water, and her temps aren't nearly as cold as they were in Texas.
As for the hyped up story of people getting a $17,000 electric bill, the original story was for one guy that had 3 meters: his house, a second mother-in-law house, AND a bussiness property. The $17,000 bill was for all three of them combined. The majority of people only saw a 5-10x normal bill. >> I saw on the news that folks in Texas are paying $100s per KWH and >> utilities cleaning out checking accounts $10k-$16k since direct link >> to accounts. How is this even possible to charge that much per KWh? > > I suspect we're seeing an example of what weak regulations on a monopoly > can do. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/ LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
