Is Enron Transforming Into a Real Texas Retail Electricity Provider? (houstonchronicle.com) 25
HGP Storage is a (real) Texas company providing distributed battery-based, utility-scale energy storage systems. Founded in 2013, it has "successfully developed over 20+ sites and closed over 200 MW of distributed energy projects," according to its web site.
And they just teamed up with Enron, reports the Houston Chronicle: The company that took over the defunct Enron brand, led by a "Birds Aren't Real" cofounder [28-year-old Connor Gaydos], held a mostly satirical quarterly earnings call Thursday afternoon but gave updates to an application to become a legitimate Texas energy provider... DJ Withee, chief operating officer and legal counsel at HGP Storage, a company developing utility-scale battery storage farms, was introduced as Enron's vice president of energy service. Withee said he was brought on by Gaydos to set up the customer-facing energy services business.
Enron Energy Texas LLC, a subsidiary of Enron, filed to become a Texas retail electric provider in January. Gaining this designation would allow Enron to sell electricity plans to Texas consumers. "Our business model is actually going to be very simple," Withee said. "We buy wholesale electricity, just like everybody else, but because of our efficiency, because of our use of technology, we are going to have lower costs than our competitors. Lower costs means greater savings that we can pass back to our customers...." According to Withee, Enron's goal is to provide energy at a competitive lower cost that will not only make energy more accessible but also push other Texas retail companies to drop their own prices...
Enron's filing in January included sworn and notarized affidavits from a man named Gregory Forero, who was identified in the documents as vice president of Enron Texas Energy LLC. Forero is the founder and CEO of HGP Storage.
"Forero, who signed his name to three sworn affidavits attesting to the accuracy of the application, could risk perjury charges if the statements of intention to start a legitimate retail electric company are found to be false, according to the Texas Penal Code..."
But does this replace Enron's plan to sell egg-shaped home nuclear reactors?
And they just teamed up with Enron, reports the Houston Chronicle: The company that took over the defunct Enron brand, led by a "Birds Aren't Real" cofounder [28-year-old Connor Gaydos], held a mostly satirical quarterly earnings call Thursday afternoon but gave updates to an application to become a legitimate Texas energy provider... DJ Withee, chief operating officer and legal counsel at HGP Storage, a company developing utility-scale battery storage farms, was introduced as Enron's vice president of energy service. Withee said he was brought on by Gaydos to set up the customer-facing energy services business.
Enron Energy Texas LLC, a subsidiary of Enron, filed to become a Texas retail electric provider in January. Gaining this designation would allow Enron to sell electricity plans to Texas consumers. "Our business model is actually going to be very simple," Withee said. "We buy wholesale electricity, just like everybody else, but because of our efficiency, because of our use of technology, we are going to have lower costs than our competitors. Lower costs means greater savings that we can pass back to our customers...." According to Withee, Enron's goal is to provide energy at a competitive lower cost that will not only make energy more accessible but also push other Texas retail companies to drop their own prices...
Enron's filing in January included sworn and notarized affidavits from a man named Gregory Forero, who was identified in the documents as vice president of Enron Texas Energy LLC. Forero is the founder and CEO of HGP Storage.
"Forero, who signed his name to three sworn affidavits attesting to the accuracy of the application, could risk perjury charges if the statements of intention to start a legitimate retail electric company are found to be false, according to the Texas Penal Code..."
But does this replace Enron's plan to sell egg-shaped home nuclear reactors?
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> It's the only state where you need to buy a card from the government in order to drink a beer at a restaurant.
"Texas state law does not require a person over 21 to present an ID to buy alcohol in Texas. Nothing in the law declares specific forms of “valid” IDs for alcohol purchases. But since store clerks, wait staff and bartenders can be criminally liable for selling alcohol to a minor, they often require a photo ID issued by a government agency." - https://www.tabc.texas.gov/pub... [texas.gov]
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They really don't have any respect for us (Score:2)
The next crash these scam artists are engineering is going to be so much worse than 2008.
I can't believe they see value in this brand (Score:3)
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And if it's one thing the last 6 months has taught me it's that the public has the memory capacity of a forgetful goldfish.
Yeah (Score:2)
WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong [wikipedia.org]
The Smartest Guys in the Room Are Back—With (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that Enron—resurrected by a “Birds Aren’t Real” founder—is trying to sell retail electricity in Texas. And weirdly, it’s not a total joke. Their plan? Slap the Enron logo on a wholesale-to-retail resell operation inside ERCOT (Texas’s isolated power grid), promise “tech-enabled efficiency,” and hope no one notices they’re just another middleman with a nostalgia filter.
They don’t generate electricity. They can’t make it cheaper. They’ll just buy it like everyone else and maybe offer slightly better billing software or a meme-worthy plan name. Think: Smartest Guys in the Room 2.0, now with battery storage and ironic mustaches.
It’s legally real, potentially functional, and cosmically on-brand for 21st-century apex capitalism: revive a disgraced corporate corpse, wrap it in absurdist theater, and hope the regulators are too confused to say no.
Welcome to Texas, y'all, where even satire is comically oversized.
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Their plan? Slap the Enron logo on a wholesale-to-retail resell operation inside ERCOT (Texasâ(TM)s isolated power grid), promise âoetech-enabled efficiency,â and hope no one notices theyâ(TM)re just another middleman with a nostalgia filter.
That sounds about right.
They donâ(TM)t generate electricity. They canâ(TM)t make it cheaper. Theyâ(TM)ll just buy it like everyone else and maybe offer slightly better billing software or a meme-worthy plan name. Think: Smartest Guys in the Room 2.0, now with battery storage and ironic mustaches.
To be fair they did state that they had some "thermal back-up generation resources" which I assume are natural gas turbines, and they only become profitable at times of peak spot prices due to their inefficiency. Even though they are inefficient natural gas turbines are used for power generation because they can be started up quickly to produce a lot of power, and also provide "inertia" to the frequency stability that was supposedly needed to prevent the large outage in Portugal and
Re: The Smartest Guys in the Room Are Back—W (Score:2)
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and they only become profitable at times of peak spot prices due to their inefficiency.
That is nonsense.
Gas turbines are extremely efficient. As efficient as a "single" heat plant can get.
Obviously combined cycle gas plants are more efficient as they use the exhaust of gas turbines to heat a boiler.
Electricity from Gas turbines is expensive: because the plant/turbine is absurd expensive. A single blade of the turbine rotors in the burning area costs as much as a german middle class car.
Be real, be fake, or be a meme stock (Score:1)
Either you are a real, bona fide company, in which case you need to change your name, OR
You are a satirical company, in which case you shouldn't confuse people by doing things only real companies bother to do, OR
You are on the way to becoming a meme stock, where your "value" compared to your competition is because of your snarkiness.
I wouldn't want to depend on a meme stock company for my electricity. My non-essentials like the bumper sticker on my car or what fast-food place I eat at occasionally, sure, bu
Likely to be a short lived buisness model. (Score:3, Interesting)
I expect this business model to be short lived.
If I'm gathering this correctly they intend to buy wholesale power on the cheap to charge up batteries to then sell at a higher price to retail consumers. There was also mention of "thermal back-up generation resources" which I assume are natural gas generators for making up for any gaps in the power they can pull from the batteries, something that is not likely profitable unless electricity spot prices are high.
I call this short lived because it should not take a genius for utilities to figure out that they can buy the same batteries as HGP Storage to avoid having to sell electricity on the cheap because of an over abundance of wind and/or solar power. With solar power subsidies structured as they are it has become profitable to at times pay people to take this electricity. I recall that in Texas this doesn't happen, or happens very rarely, because the Texas legislature was smart enough to not pay people to produce more electricity than was demanded at the time. It's when the naturally created demand is insufficient to take the artificially produced subsidized supply that prices go negative, the negative pricing is to artificially produce demand, a market created by solar subsidies. So, to prevent the spot price going negative, which is encouraging wasting of energy, Texas structured solar incentives to not drive spot prices below zero. At least as I recall.
For a company that lives on battery storage as their primary service the spot price must have some pretty wide swings in the spot price from high to low. I have suspicions that if this business model becomes popular then we could see market manipulations to force the spot prices to get even wider swings in spot price. Consider a company holding back battery storage capacity until the spot price gets ridiculously high, to the kind of levels that Enron got famous for in the first place. They withhold services until there's blackouts, because it's more profit for them to see spot prices get high before providing power than trying to keep the grid, and the spot price, stable.
I see one of two things stepping in to end this business model. One could be the regulators and legislators step in and create new rules on how any grid tied energy storage is to function. Another outcome I see is some utilities, and/or large electricity consumers like metal refineries or such, getting in on the business of energy storage as part of their business model. Large electricity consumers tend to already have power factor correction and backup generators so it would be trivial to add energy storage to this as a big bank of batteries with inverters are already used for power factor correction and backup power. With these large electricity consumers working to keep their electricity costs low by buying more to charge batteries when prices are low and using batteries when prices are high they can price anyone out of the market that rely on the spot price variations for their profits.
I expect that this company will have to go out of business or add more services to make a profit. Maybe that is their long term plan to begin with. Perhaps using the land and grid connections they are using for batteries now to later cover them with solar PV panels, or maybe put up windmills, or perhaps invest in a few small modular nuclear power plants.
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"They have lots of competition already."
It's not real competition. These "providers" are just middlemen reselling electricity at a heavy markup. They don't do any work or maintenance on the lines or generate any electricity. All these "providers" do is buy low, and sell high. Even when you get a "cheap" plan, you're overpaying for the electricity. Fitting that Enron, who did exactly this in California, is going to show up in Texas, which is doing the same "deregulated" schtick that caused so many problems f
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They withhold services until there's blackouts, because it's more profit for them to see spot prices get high before providing power than trying to keep the grid, and the spot price, stable.
If your market regulators allow that: blame the legislation.
If a price is high at the spot market, it simply means: there is a buyer for that price.
Ordinary customers, who already paid the "overpriced" end consumer price: are not affected.
Giving them a black out is illegal in Europe (and in general technically not possib
Seems fair enough (Score:1)
In other words (Score:2)