Texans escape high power prices of last summer
Houston Chronicle
L.M. Sixel Sep. 8, 2020 Updated: Sep. 8, 2020 6:49 a.m.
Texas made it through the summer without wholesale electricity prices jumping repeatedly to the state’s maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour and driving up the price of retail power plans.
This year, in addition to avoiding an extreme heat wave, the state power grid had more generation capacity while government stay-at-home guidelines to slow the spread of coronavirus depressed overall demand.
That’s good news for consumers, whose electricity costs are determined in part by wholesale prices, but not so much for power companies that depend on high summer prices to boost profits. NRG Energy, one of the biggest generators and retailers of electricity in Texas, reported that last year’s round of high prices and hot weather helped increase profits more than 10 times to $4.4 billion compared to $268 million in 2018.
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