City, residents hit with $1.34M bill for winter storm fiasco
Wichita Falls and its residents have been hit with a $1,334,460 bill because of the electric grid fiasco that happened during February’s winter storm.
An item on Tuesday’s City Council Agenda calls for paying a bill for “ancillary charges owed by the City to Gexa Energy for energy used during Winter Storm Uri.”
Gexa is a retail electricity provider similar to Reliant, Texas Electric and others who rushed into the market when Texas deregulated the electric industry in 2002.
The city’s electric rate did not fluctuate during the storm, but the city will have to pay because of a complicated method of “maintaining the reliable operations of the electric grid in Texas,” according to the council’s agenda item.
May 29—HARLINGEN — This year's historic winter storm is burning into pocketbooks across the Lone Star State. Now, the state's power grid is hitting customers with mind-boggling electric bills blamed on February's deep freeze. In Harlingen, City Hall is stuck with a blood-curdling $649,128 bill to cover unrestricted record rates charged from Feb. 14 to 20. Soon, property owners are likely to .
The Brownwood City Council on Tuesday approved making a one-time payment of $269,238.54 to ERCOT for ancillary service charges. The impact of the February winter storm resulted in high ancillary services costs that are billed to the City under its agreement with Gexa Energy.
The council was presented three options of payment:
Pay the entire amount by June 4, 2021.
Pay the charges monthly beginning with the invoice for June 2021 usage and continuing through December 2022. The monthly additional charge would be $14,493.63. This amount over the term would cost the city a total of $275,389.42, which includes interest in the amount of $6,150.88.
Pay the charges monthly beginning with the invoice for June 2021 usage and continuing through December 2028. The monthly additional charge would be $4,049.08 and would cost the city a total of $368,466.28, which includes interest in the amount of $99,227.74.
Low hanging fruit
According to Kurt House, co-founder and CEO of KoBold, the low-hanging fruit in the form of easy-to-reach mineral reserves are mostly gone, and the narrow window available to act to prevent climate change means that we simply don’t have the luxury of time to wait another 10 or 20 years to make more discoveries.
KoBold is partnering with Stanford University’s Center for Earth Resource Forecasting in developing an AI agent that will make decisions about where explorers should focus their attention. KoBold will first look for copper, cobalt, nickel, and lithium key metals in the manufacture of batteries for EVs, smartphones, and other renewable equipment such as solar panels.