Never thought the pennies you save in the slow months offset the risk.
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I might be really nervous right now if I was a brazos electric customer
My client is in charge of utilities for Texas A&M in College Station. He had to fight to keep the lights on based on all the research projects they have going on along with a couple thousand students.
He says they are now being hit with a bill in excess of a couple mil.
Whoa !!!
With all the research they have, I would have expected A$M to have backup
generators for essential research stuff. Poor planning; poor aggies.
OTOH, the company I worked at had a tox lab building at one point; during extended
Power outages they would solicit employees to fan rats in the basement I’m told.
Apparently there was never risk in using Griddy. No idea how the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act could be used against them, it was clear cut what the company provided. It spelled it out as clear as day on the dang home page of the website. So Griddy didn’t make any money and doesn’t have any assets, so where is the money coming from?
I saw that too; there are going to be a lot of billable legal hours when
this is all said and done !
I’m thinking the scenario that will play out is all retail providers with unpaid bills will fold up shop and declare bankruptcy. The energy generators will try to collect,
but these retail providers have essentially no real assets. Can the electricity generators go after
the end user customers of the bankrupt retail providers ?
And the individuals that had auto debit bank accounts have already taken a big hit from their checking accounts , if not already put in negative balance territory 
. Think of all the grief that causes them.
I’m not clear on what the state can do retroactively about these unpaid bills. How does deceptive trade practices even stick here ? It seems like a reach. Unless some class action lawsuit is filed(on what grounds ?) to get the electricity generators to accept a much lower and reasonable rate. The electricity Generators are really not hurt here, and are the windfall receipitants of an act of nature. I realize I’m throwing outs legalese terms here that I’m really not well versed in 
. From the article
it kinda sounds as if the state is colluding with debtors to defraud generators of their profit.
I would be interested in how our legal friends on the board see this playing out and defining
the issues here.
So nimrods who bragged about their $25 electric bill in January get bailed out by Texas taxpayers for February?
Sounds fair
It sounds more like Texas attorney general is trying to just make all just go away.
By doing so he may be exposing the state to conspiracy to defraud. Stay tuned and
get extra popcorn.
Soumds about right for indicted felon Ken Paxton.
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So no gas in NC, electric cars sure coming in handy over there.
Yes and so are bicycles and walking shoes.
Lots of electric tractor trailers to move food and other essentials
No diesel shortage.
Yet
The current issue could easily happen in the electricity space.
Agree, all infrastructure (water, gas, electric, refineries, hospitals, cities, etc) are vulnerable to these hacks unless you have separate physical networks and/or strong IT discipline.
We haven’t collectively as a country learned our lessons yet. It’s not cheap to
Implement and maintain, but consequences are pretty big.
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So far, the rationalization is that you can walk or ride a bike to replace your car, and in theory electricity can also be hacked too, even though that’s not the case in NC. lol. Just proves that there’s no reason for debating or discourse as everyone has their minds made up and nothing you can say will change them. So what’s left is insulting and poking fun at the other side. Which is what happens here when topics devolve, then gets locked!
I brought up one thing that is true and I think is a reasonable response/discourse. The walk/bike thing is a different story and don’t think the two should be lumped together.
This kind of thing will keep happening and goes far beyond our pipelines. Pretty concerning area.
It is a very serious thing. If a hostile power can cripple your financial and infrastructure systems
at there whim with “state hackers”, you have a huge problem on your hand.
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