Texas homeowners see electric bills surge to as high as $17,000 in wake of winter storms

Texans have seen electric bills surge as high as $17,000 after two powerful storms knocked out power and caused a 300-fold surge in demand – as 14million people struggle to get clean water in a ‘health catastrophe’. 

While most Texans are on a fixed rate plan on which they pay the same monthly amount throughout the duration of their contract, some are on a variable or indexed plan which sees rates vary based on the market.

One of these customers, Ty Williams, told WFAA-TV that his combined electric bill last month for his home, guest house, and office was $660.

As of this month, he owes more than $17,000. ‘How in the world can anyone pay that?’ Williams asked.

Meanwhile, temperatures as low as -2F have burst many of the state’s water pipes, leaving residents forced to scrape snow off the walls to boil to make it safe for cooking and drinking. 

As the Lone Star state remained in the grip of crisis, Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi and their daughters hit the beach in Cancun after the senator was forced to fly back on Thursday following an outcry.   

Ty Williams was a subscriber with Griddy, the Houston-based wholesale electricity company that charges customers a monthly fee to connect members to the wholesale energy market.

He said: ‘I mean you go from a couple hundred dollars a month…there’s absolutely no way…it makes no sense.’ 

Unlike fixed-term pricing, Griddy charges customers based on fluctuations of the market, which could change minute to minute.

This week, Griddy took the unusual step of urging its customers to switch providers, knowing that the bills they would be charged would be exponentially higher than normal.

When Williams wanted to switch providers, he was told that he could only sign on as a new customer with a fixed-rate contract beginning next week.

‘Pretty much you are being held hostage and there isn’t anything you can do about it,’ he said.

Royce Pierce and his wife, Danielle, live in their three-bedroom home in the Willow Park section of Dallas.

In recent days, their electric bill surged by almost $10,000, according to NBC News.

When the electric grid was shut down earlier this week, it led to a surge in demand and a sharp drop in supply, causing the prices to skyrocket from $50 per Megawatt to $9,000 per Megawatt.

The surge reflects the real-time megawatt hour price of electricity and the cost of congestion and losses at different points across the grid.

Early on Monday, ERCOT said extreme weather conditions forced many power generating units off the grid, upending the supply of electricity.

ERCOT did not respond to an email message about the spike in wholesale electricity prices.

On February 10, well before inclement weather hit Texas, spot wholesale prices on ERCOT settled around $30 per megawatt hour at the end of the day, ERCOT data show.

But on Sunday, the price per megawatt hour surged past $9,000 on the grid.

ERCOT can be more susceptible to wholesale price spikes because it does not have a capacity market, which pays power plants to be on standby during peak demand and weather emergencies, for example.

ERCOT’s model means consumers are not paying for generation that may never be called into action.

But early on Monday, ERCOT said extreme weather conditions caused many generating units – across all fuel types – to trip offline and become unavailable.

That forced more than 30,000 megawatts of power generation off the grid, ERCOT said in a news release.

Griddy released a statement on its web site saying the company was also ‘p****d’ about the price surge.

The company blamed the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the agency that regulates the nonprofit ERCOT.

Earlier this week the PUC issued an order mandating that ERCOT keep pricing at $9,000 per Megawatt.

Those who were lucky enough to still have power will see their bills dramatically increase.

‘Because energy prices should reflect scarcity of the supply, the market price for the energy needed to serve load being shed in the face of scarcity should also be at its highest,’ the PUC said in a news release.

‘The decision was spurred by ERCOT’s discovery that energy prices across the system were clearing at less than the current system-wide offer cap of $9,000 established by Commission rule.’ 

Some 14 million Texans continue to experience water outages, forcing residents to scrape snow off walls and boil it for drinking water while hundreds of motorists wait in line outside a Houston stadium to get bottled water.

The disrupted water service left many longing for a hot shower just as the state’s power grid jerked back to life after five days of blackouts.

All the state’s power plants were functioning again, although more than 195,000 homes remained without electricity on Friday morning.

As of Thursday afternoon, more than 1,000 Texas public water systems and 177 of the state’s 254 counties had reported weather-related operational disruptions, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. 

With power back on, officials hope to replenish the state’s water supply. 

Experts said the dangerously low water levels posed a threat to residents who needed to boil water in order to do mundane tasks like brushing their teeth, cooking, or drinking. 

The situation has inflicted yet more misery throughout the state. 

Some residents returned to homes only to find that the ceilings had collapsed because of water pipes that burst as a result of the record low, sub-freezing temperatures that engulfed the region over the course of the past week. 

In Austin, hospital staffers were forced to use trash bags to vacate waste from the toilets while not being able to wash their hands or take a shower because of a lack of water. 

More than two dozen sick patients who had been hospitalized in the state capital had to be transferred to other facilities as temperatures in hallways and patient rooms plummeted and frigid conditions took hold due to a lack of heat, according to the Austin American-Statesman. 

‘Out of caution, yesterday we transported approximately 30 patients who were either vulnerable or could easily be cared for at another facility,’ David Huffstutler, the CEO of St. David’s HealthCare, said in an email on Thursday. 

‘We continue to work with the City of Austin in an effort to resolve the water outage, but they have been unsuccessful in resolving the water system issue affecting service and water pressure to our hospital.’ 

St. David’s South Austin Medical Center on Wednesday reported a loss of heat and water pressure. Officials there said they were taking steps to get water to the hospital. 

Huffstutler said water tank trucks have been deployed to three hospitals – St. David’s South Austin Medical Center, St. David’s Medical Center and Heart Hospital of Austin – to connect and pressurize their systems due to water outages and low pressure.

‘While the duration of this issue remains unknown at this time, all St. David’s HealthCare facilities are prepared to handle the situation and have a sufficient supply of water to help ensure that we can continue to provide our patients with exceptional care,’ he said. 

More than 1 million gallons of water was being trucked Friday to the Texas capital. 

But Austin’s water director, Greg Meszaros, implored residents to minimize the use of home faucets because ‘there’s still a lot of unknowns as we pressurize the system.’

According to Meszaros, 325 million gallons of water have been lost due to burst pipes – and that’s just in Austin alone. 

‘We know that there are tens of thousands of leaks,’ Meszaros told CNN. 

‘As the fire department indicated they have responded to thousands upon thousands of burst pipes.’  

In Dallas, David Lopez said the plumbing company he works for received more than 600 calls for service over the last week.

‘It’s pretty much first come, first served,’ said Lopez, as he and a colleague manhandled a new water heater out of their van on Friday. 

‘Everyone’s got emergencies.’

Houston residents probably will have to boil tap water in the fourth-largest American city until Sunday or Monday, said Mayor Sylvester Turner.

Water service was restored Friday to two Houston Methodist community hospitals, but officials were still bringing in drinking water and some elective surgeries were canceled, spokeswoman Gale Smith said. 

The winter storm has been blamed for more than 30 deaths in Texas and 58 across the country.

A warming trend is expected to relieve some of the pressure on the region on Saturday, the National Weather Service said.

‘One more night of below freezing temperatures at some areas, then a warm up is expected into the weekend,’ the weather service’s Houston office wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Bitter cold weather and snow have paralyzed Texas since Sunday, shutting down much of the state’s electricity grid and freezing pipes and waterways, leaving communities across the state either without water altogether or forced to boil it for safety.

Monday was the third coldest day since record keeping began, according to Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, with a statewide average temperature of 16.7 degrees Fahrenheit, citing records dating back to 1899.

That same day, temperatures in the state capital Austin dropped below those in parts of Alaska.

Jennifer Jordan, 54, of Midlothian just south of Dallas, said she and her husband were without power even though the family’s online account with the provider indicated their issues had been ‘resolved.’

‘I have no power at my house – not one drop of power,’ the high school special-education teacher said in an interview. 

‘It’s really hard. You are really longing to get a hot shower, eat a hot meal.’

But even as services in many neighborhoods return, broken pipes and other damage continue to render some homes uninhabitable.

In Houston on Friday, plumbers worked on Friday to repair pipes that froze and ruptured in Drew Ainscough’s 1920s bungalow, damaging several rooms. 

Water service has been returned to his block, but remains turned off for their home as repairs continue.

‘Right now, we’re not really able to live in there,’ said the 33-year-old engineer, who has been staying with his in-laws for the past several days. 

‘Hopefully, by this weekend we’ll be able to have everything cleaned up enough.’

In parts of the state, frozen roads remained impassable. Ice-downed lines and other issues had utility workers scrambling to reconnect homes to power, while oil and gas producers look for ways to renew output.

Hospitals in some hard-hit areas ran out of water and transferred patients elsewhere. Millions of people were ordered to boil their drinking water after water-treatment plants lost power, which could allow harmful bacteria to proliferate.

In Houston, a mass distribution of bottled water opened at Delmar Stadium on Friday, the city’s Office of Emergency Management said. 

Around midday, the line of cars waiting to enter the stadium stretched for at least half a mile, one police officer told Reuters.

Speaking at the stadium distribution site, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said the city aimed to distribute more than 1 million bottles of water to its residents on Friday and that another mass distribution would take place on Saturday.

A boil-water order for the city might be lifted as soon as Monday, he said.

Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, which encompasses Houston, said she was pleased with progress, but warned residents to brace for more hardship.

‘The grid is still fragile,’ she said, noting cold weather would persist for a few days, which would ‘put pressure on these power plants that have just come back on.’

President Joe Biden said he would accelerate federal emergency assistance for Texas and had directed his administration to identify other resources to help the state.

Biden said he would meet with the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on Friday and ask him to issue a major disaster declaration to speed up aid.

‘God willing, it will bring a lot of relief to a lot of Texans,’ Biden told reporters at the White House.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott confirmed that all power-generating plants were online as of Thursday afternoon. 

He urged lawmakers to pass legislation to ensure the grid was prepared for cold weather in the future.

‘What happened this week to our fellow Texans is absolutely unacceptable and can never be replicated again,’ Abbott told an afternoon news conference.

The governor lashed out at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), a cooperative responsible for 90 per cent of the state’s electricity, which he said had told officials before the storm that the grid was prepared.

ERCOT officials have defended their preparations and the decision to begin forced outages Monday as the grid reached a breaking point. 

Officials said during a press call on Friday that ERCOT has enough generation in its system to return to normal operations.

‘I really want to acknowledge this immense human suffering we saw throughout this event,’ ERCOT Chief Executive Bill Magness said at a news conference on Friday.

‘When people lose power, there are heartbreaking consequences.’

Two community hospitals that are part of the Houston Methodist system in Texas’ largest city had to get ‘creative’ when their water supply was cut off this week, said Public Relations Director Stefanie Asin. 

A shower trailer was brought in for frigid, exhausted staff, and laundry bins were deployed to collect rainwater to flush toilets.

As of Friday, water service had been restored at those hospitals, Asin said in an interview.

‘The water will be challenging,’ she said.

‘We’ve handled it so far, we’ll continue handling it. … But we’ll still need to take precautions.’

The casualties in Houston included an 11-year-old Texas boy who died of suspected hypothermia in his family’s mobile home. 

Cristian Pavon’s mother found him unresponsive, huddled under a pile of blankets, on Tuesday – after his home in Conroe lost power last weekend as temperatures plunged to single digits.  

The boy, who had no pre-existing conditions, was pronounced dead on Tuesday afternoon. Just hours earlier, he’d been excited to see snow for the first time after moving to the US from Honduras in 2019 to live with his mom. 

Cristian is one of at least 30 people to have died in Texas since the storms struck, causing rolling power blackouts that left 4.4 million people without heat. 

Nationwide, 58 people have died, including many who perished struggling to get warm and a Tennessee farmer who tried to save two calves that apparently wandered onto a frozen pond. 

Among the dead in Texas are a man who reportedly froze to death in his recliner chair with his ‘nearly dead’ wife by his side; three children who perished in a fire as they huddled in a fireplace for warmth; and a mother and daughter died who from carbon monoxide poisoning as they bundled in their car in a garage.   

In Harris County, at least 10 people have died of hypothermia and there has been more than 600 cases of carbon monoxide poisoning, tweeted Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo Friday.  

The victims include 84-year-old Mary Gee whose family said she froze to death in her home in Houston before a burglar robbed items from her apartment.  

Over in Abilene, a man was found frozen to death Wednesday in his recliner chair and his wife was  taken to hospital where she remains ‘in peril’ after suffering without power for several days. 

Another man died at a health care facility in the city when a lack of water pressure made medical treatment impossible. 

The three children who perished in a house fire in Sugar Land when they huddled in a fireplace to stay warm during power outages have now been named as Olivia, Edison and Colette Nguyen. 

The siblings and their grandmother Le Loan died in the early hours of Tuesday morning during the blackouts. 

Investigators believe the family was using a fireplace to stay warm when a fire broke out.  

Firefighters were called out around 2 am and tackled the blaze but the four victims were confirmed dead. The children’s mom Jackie Nguyen and a friend were also injured and taken to hospital. 

In Houston, Etenesh Mersha and her 7-year-old daughter Rakeb Shelemu died from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning Monday after they huddled in their car in the garage for warmth amid a blackout in their home. 

Etenesh’s husband Ato Shalemu Bekele and their 8-year-old son Beimnet Shalemu were also rushed to hospital where the little boy was still in ICU two days later.

Wesley Crow, 57, collapsed and died in his old farmhouse just outside Santa Fe after he and his sister Laura were left for almost two days without power.  

‘He just collapsed, his eyes rolled up into his head and just stopped breathing,’ Crow told ABC13. 

Wish you were here, Ted? Senator Cruz’s wife Heidi and their daughters hit the beach in Cancun while Texas reels after historic storm 

By James Gordon for Dailymail.com

Ted Cruz’s family has been pictured enjoying the sea, sand and sunshine on the Mexican beaches of Cancun without the Texas Senator. 

Sen. Cruz’s wife Heidi Cruz, 48, and couple’s children Catherine and Caroline were pictured on Friday at the popular but pricey, $300-a-night Ritz Carlton resort.

Heidi appeared to be enjoying drinks with friends while her husband was forced to return to Texas to face the music amid a wave of outrage that emerged as the state endures the aftermath of the worst winter storm in a generation. 

But winter couldn’t have been further from Heidi’s mind as she had fun splashing around in the waves while wearing a red bikini. 

The family family soaked up the sun under blue beach umbrellas, some 800 miles away from a frigid Texas where temperatures were expected to dip into the 30s on Friday night. 

Video filmed on the beach in Cancun show Cruz’s wife speaking to a waiter who hands her a drink before walking out of shot.

Heidi can then be seen speaking to her children while standing in between sun beds on the soft white sands. 

Senator Cruz landed back in Houston on Thursday afternoon and said he ‘regrets’ flying to Cancun in the middle of the state’s energy crisis for a vacation but insisted he was ‘just trying to be a dad.’ 

Cruz enraged his state by fleeing in the midst of the worst snow storms to hit the Lone Star State in decades, with the power failing for millions, and people left freezing in the subzero temperatures. 

The lawmaker claimed that his 10 and 12-year-old daughters asked him on Wednesday if they go could go on vacation to Mexico with their friends, so he and his wife boarded a plane hours later. 

‘It was obviously a mistake and in hindsight I wouldn’t have done it,’ he said, speaking on arrival at home in Houston. ‘I was trying to be a dad.

‘And all of us have made decisions… when you’ve got two girls who have been cold for two days, and haven’t had heat or power, and they are saying: “Look, we don’t have school, why don’t we go, let’s get out of here.” 

‘I think there are a lot of parents that’d be like, if I can do this, great.’ 

Cruz was initially due to return to Texas on Saturday. 

Speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday night Cruz said: ‘So last night I flew down with [my daughters] to the beach and then I flew back this afternoon.

‘I had initially planned to stay through the weekend.

‘But as I was heading down there, you know, I started to have second thoughts almost immediately because the crisis here in Texas, you need to be here on the ground.