Some Texans are receiving extremely high energy bills following the severe winter storm

Wholesale electric prices spiked during this week's severe winter storm in Texas as customers cranked their heat. This left some residents with bills upwards of $5,000 for just five days of energy use. Some analysts are saying this is a fault of being able to buy power at wholesale market rates, which can be beneficial to people during good weather but create issues in extreme circumstances like what happened this week.

is a Twitter News link, just gathering a lot of recent tweets on topic. I noted several of these already--including about one guy who got a bill for like $17,000 when his usual monthly bill is like $500, helped me really understand the system they got and why they chose it in Texas.

A lot of our utilities around the country are not so different, they have gone in this direction! Others also deregulated things-like here in NY ConEd still provides the infrastructure and is regulated, and still bills you monthly for delivering to your door and related service--BUT you choose among many providers for the actual gas and electricity, they compete on price. The problem with an open competitive unregulated market: PRICES USUALLY GO DOWN WITH COMPETITION BECAUSE THE MARKET IS LARGE, BUT SURPRISE GUESS WHAT--PRICES THEY CAN GO UP TOO when the commodity being provided becomes very precious and dear.

NYTimes' Editorial Board: The entire nation’s energy delivery system needs an overhaul.

Krugman: