Texas power provider Griddy filed for bankruptcy Monday and blamed the state’s power grid management for destroying its business.
In a statement on its website, the company argued that the actions of the Texas Electrical Reliability Council (ERCOT) to set energy at extremely high levels during a massive winter storm last month harmed both its customers and the company itself.
“Our bankruptcy plan, if confirmed, provides relief to our former customers who were unable to pay their electricity bills due to unprecedented prices. ERCOT worsened the situation of our customers by continuing to set prices at $ 9,000. per megawatt hour long after the signing the cargo ship’s instructions had stopped. Our customers paid 300 times more than the normal price of electricity during that period, “said CEO Michael Fallquist.
Griddy and Texas officials have blamed whoever was responsible for the price hikes that caused many Texans to face surprisingly high energy bills in the days following the deadly storm. Griddy, which allows customers to choose from a variety of plans, recommended that users switch to flat-rate plans before the storm arrives and many who did not encounter extremely high rates of energy use during the storm as a large of the state power grid. failed.
A co-founder of Griddy, Gregory Craig, added to the company’s statement that its pricing plans would not have resulted in high energy bills if “the grid had not failed and regulators had not intervened.”
The company is accused of rejecting the prices in a class action and the state attorney general claimed in a lawsuit that Griddy violated Texas’ Misleading Business Practices Act.
“As the jeans struggled to survive this winter storm, Griddy worsened the suffering even further, as he owed outrageous amounts every day. As the first lawsuit filed by my office to deal with the outrageous failure of power companies, I will be held accountable. to Griddy for his escalation of this winter storm disaster, ”said Attorney General Ken Paxton (R).
Dozens of jeans and others from surrounding states died as a result of last month’s freezing conditions, while millions were left without electricity for days. Officials have blamed the frozen machinery on natural gas plants, which provide much of the state’s energy, for the outages.