Texas is still recovering from the snowstorm that caused the state’s power grid to collapse and left millions of people without electricity during the freezing weather. For days, millions of Texans lived without energy, enough heat, accessible roads or empathy for certain elected officials. (I’m looking at you, Senator Ted Cruz and former Colorado mayor Tim Boyd.)
Now President Joe Biden has declared a major disaster in the state, “providing a wider range of federal assistance to help people affected by the severe winter storm,” reports the Washington Post. According to the Post, the statement allows “individuals and business owners in Texas to apply for federal emergency assistance, including subsidies for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses and other insurance programs. recovery “and, hopefully, help extends to Texans who now face electricity bills of up to $ 10,000 and even more due to the storm that seems nobody was ready to.
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From NBC News:
As the Texas power grid collapsed under a historic winter storm, Jose Del Rio of Haltom City in the Dallas-Fort Worth area saw the electricity bill for a two-bedroom home he is trying to sell slowly increase in the the past two weeks. The bill typically ranges from $ 125 to $ 150 a month, he said. But his account has already been charged around $ 630 this month – and he still owes another $ 2,600.
“If the worst happens, I have the ability to put it on a credit card or discover something,” said Del Rio. “There is no one living in that house. All lights are off. But I have air at 60 because I don’t want the pipes to freeze ”.
When he contacted Griddy, his electric company, they advised him to switch suppliers, Del Rio said.
Griddy’s prices are controlled by the market and are therefore vulnerable to sudden fluctuations in demand. With extreme weather, energy use has skyrocketed, raising wholesale energy prices to more than $ 9,000 per megawatt-hour – compared to the seasonal average of $ 50 per megawatt-hour.
In the face of rising costs, Griddy has advised consumers to consider switching electricity providers temporarily to save on their bills.
According to NBC, about 90 percent of Texas electricity is supplied by the Texas Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT) – which has become the subject of much controversy because many people seem to think that Texas has its own unregulated power grid by the federal government it has something to do with the disaster – but state residents, both inside and outside the ERCOT service area, reported utility bills that are twice what they usually pay and, for some, the increase was much greater.
According to The Hill, a Dallas resident told reporters that he usually pays about $ 660 in electricity bills for his home, pension and office, but he said his most recent energy bills exceeded $ 17,000 due to storm. Another Dallas family said they saw their three-bedroom house’s electricity bill come close to $ 10,000 in a few days.
A Texas Legal Services Center lawyer, Keegan Warren-Clem, told NBC that there are “limited options available in the absence of action at the state level to provide consistent relief”, such as account assistance programs and federal energy assistance programs, many of which serve low-income families. But Warren-Clem also noted that it is not clear whether Texas laws that protect residents of utility companies that exploit natural disasters for profit extend to people who are getting these ridiculously high utility bills due to the recent storm.
What happened to millions of Texans – including the dozens who died for reasons related to the disaster – was a general catastrophe. Federal aid and any other assistance available cannot come quickly enough. Hopefully, steps are being taken in Texas to ensure that nothing like this happens again.