ND Paying For Texas Failures? Hopefully It’s Not The COWBOYS!

Bitter cold in February overwhelms Texas utilities. So of course North Dakota has to pay for them.  I might be alright with it, as long as no money goes to Jerry Jones and his underachieving Dallas Cowboys!  I hate them guys..

Let's take the story back to Mid February of 2021 when things got mighty cold down in Texas. It was a deadly serious situation as NBC News reported..

The bitter cold contributed to an overburdened electrical system resulting in rolling power outages or total blackouts for more than 3 million people.

 

at least 46 deaths from 10 states have been weather-related, the majority in Texas.

So what were the "well intentioned" utilities going to do for their suffering customers?  If you said gouge the hell of them, then in many cases you were right on!  One such company call Griddy (y'know like a power-grid- how cute is that?)

Not cute at all...Griddy went bankrupt due to the outages...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Griddy Energy will forgive the more than $29 million customers owe in unpaid bills.

Paxton, who sued the energy company this month, said he wanted to "hold them accountable" in last month's historic winter storm, which left millions of Texans without power in subfreezing temperatures.

Of course, Griddy kicked the blame can down the road... blaming the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.

ERCOT manages power for about 90 percent of the state's electric load, and when the winter storm hit, energy usage soared. ERCOT set prices at $9,000 per megawatt-hour, according to Griddy; the seasonal average is $50 per megawatt-hour.

The spike in prices left many Griddy customers with bills totaling hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars.

For customers that had Griddy automatically debiting their accounts, many reported $10,000 debits going to the utility.  Truly madness, and truly kicking people when they're down.  Is that the Texas way y'all?

Well the whole debacle sent natural gas prices soaring nationwide and since it's not the job of your local utility to eat price increases, they're passing them along.   Locally MDU has already begun...KVRR reports

 Montana-Dakota Utilities natural gas customers are already paying another $3.00 to $4.00 per month because of the Texas cold snap.

But it appears MDU customers are getting off pretty easy as Xcel Energy reported that the cold snap cost them close to $1 billion. So Xcel natural gas customers are paying ..this from Prairie Public

The average consumer will pay around $15.72 per month. That cost will be in effect until September, 2022. The North Dakota Public Service Commission says the cost is being spread out over a 15-month period.

With all the heat this summer I'm sure the grid is groaning once again.