I wonder how many people realized that their bill could reach those numbers. There should be cap on the prices to prevent this type of gouging, or some kind of price leveling state wide to distribute the pain.
This is what normal utilities do. A few customers decided to opt out of the normal system and play the electricity market and now they're reaping the results. If you gamble on GameStop stock, you lose money. If you gamble your house's power on Griddy, you lose money.
But it seems that the cap (as regulation) was also removed during this storm, which honestly none of these customers could have expected. When they signed up for Griddy, a legal cap was indeed in place.
https://thetexan.news/texas-utility-regulator-increased-elec...
These large power bills are a feature not a bug, as the customers can simply turn off the things using the power.
On Saturday, Griddy sent out emails basically telling all of their customers they should leave their service (I was a Griddy customer; I switched, but not before running up $900 of charges over the weekend)
When I lived in central Texas, I had an electric provider who was month-to-month and updated prices probably once a year.
I currently live North Texas and have a 3 year contract with an electric provider at a fixed rate that was established when the contract was signed.
And then there's people using Griddy, which uses current market prices. It's like daytrading, but for something you can't live without.
You're asking the majority of a state of 29 million people to be as informed as the lobbyists for the electricity markets. To understand the pitfalls of privatizing and regulating an asset that is by its very nature, a monopoly (electrical distribution)
You're right - every single Texan wants freedom and doesn't want help.
As an aside, have you ever been to Texas or met many Texans?
No, that's only about half the state. The rest of us would rather not have been forced to risk catching frostbite in our own lightless homes but our opinions never seem to matter.