AG sues Texas utility over customers’ sky-high energy bills

<p>AUSTIN, Texas &mdash; Texas’ attorney general said Monday he’s suing electricity provider Griddy for passing along <a href="https://apnews.com/article/texas-high-electric-bills-e8cb3450888464a059e3132b23cb6f5d">massive bills</a> to its customers during last month’s winter storm.</p>
<p>The lawsuit comes days after Texas’ power grid manager effectively shut down Griddy by revoking its access to the state’s electricity market.</p>
<p>Griddy charges $10 a month to give people a way to pay wholesale prices for electricity instead of a fixed rate. But when temperatures plummeted well below freezing last month, wholesale prices spiked and Griddy customers were left with sky-high electricity bills.</p>
<p>“Griddy misled Texans and signed them up for services which, in a time of crisis, resulted in individual Texans each losing thousands of dollars," Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “As Texans struggled to survive this winter storm, Griddy made the suffering even worse as it debited outrageous amounts each day.”</p>
<p>The lawsuit accused Griddy of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and seeks refunds for customers. The unusually heavy winter storm blanketed much of Texas with snow, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/texas-power-plants-off-crisis-a2b1d4c2839b2c980436f8d6d4f37282">knocking out electricity </a> to 4 million customers and leaving many <a href="https://apnews.com/article/aging-waterworks-south-cold-weather-44c75dbe4ee2340537dc642f708cc647">struggling to find clean water</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, shifted about 10,000 Griddy customers to other utilities on Friday. </p>
<p>Griddy said in a statement that ERCOT “took our members and have effectively shut down Griddy.” </p>
<p>“We have always been transparent and customer-centric at every step. We wanted to continue the fight for our members to get relief and that hasn’t changed,” the statement said.</p>