October 30 2019, 01:54

In Houston, there’s an interesting startup – Griddy (GoGriddy dot com). It’s an alternative electricity provider. Here’s the concept. A typical provider bills you at a fixed rate per kilowatt-hour, which is almost always significantly higher than the wholesale rate, and that’s where they make their profit. The wholesale rate, which is what the typical provider pays for the electricity, fluctuates – like lower at night, higher during heatwaves. Plus, the volume is important – if their customers only use 80 percent, the rest just burns off. So, in Texas, you can switch providers. In zip code 77060 (north Houston), there are 55 providers available. One of them, Griddy, bills at the actual wholesale rate, updating it every hour. Allegedly, in 96% of cases, this rate is below the Texas average. Plus, they charge ten bucks for membership to cover peaks and make earnings. There’s an app that shows you a chart – actual electricity usage, rate schedule by the hour. They have API and FTTT to set up a smart home to use less electricity during high-cost periods, or just to receive SMS notifications.

Since Griddy collects and analyzes data from all clients, they can predict quite accurately how much energy to purchase. This allows them to get a better price than traditional energy providers who also calculate but maintain a flat rate and make a profit on the delta. And Griddy calculates more precisely and doesn’t buy excess.

It’s claimed that this allows for significant savings. However, this past August, many Griddy clients took a hit because there was extreme heat, electricity consumption was at its peak, and the wholesale rate was above the Texas average, a lot of people found out that their bills didn’t go down at all, and there was an uproar. It was like “we did warn about those four percent,” but Griddy decided to be accommodating and refunded everyone’s ten-dollar membership.

Additionally, there’s a prepaid account that automatically (or manually) gets replenished from a card, and Griddy takes the money from there on its own.

But overall, the concept is interesting. In Russia, I could never have imagined that there could be “virtual electricity network operators.”