Blazouez originally provided electricity to more than 660,000 users in Texas, but the cold wave and snowstorm in mid-February froze nearly half of Texas’s power generation capacity. In order to cope with the power shortage, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a power grid operator, set the electricity price at the highest level of $9,000 per megawatt hour to attract as much electricity as possible into the power grid. The previous average electricity price was only $25 per megawatt hour.
The reporter noticed that during this period, many local power companies, including Blazouez, purchased electricity at a price 360 times higher than usual. Due to the soaring electricity price, in just a few weeks, many Texas residents burned their wages for half a year, and some even received a sky-high electricity bill of up to $200,000.
Although the whole Texas Power Company sold a record $50 billion, according to the data released by Blazouez, during the seven days of the cold wave, the company accumulated about $2.1 billion in expenses, and finally owed $1.8 billion in electricity purchase bills.
In fact, not only Blazouez company, but also other power companies that can’t supply power normally have been asked to buy alternative power at a high price. In about five days of extremely cold weather, the electricity bill in the wholesale market in the state soared by 47 billion dollars, and this figure did not include additional fees or arrears of payment, and spread to all companies that used power grid services according to ERCOT rules.
Clifton Karnei, executive vice president of Blazouez, said in a statement of bankruptcy protection: "Bankruptcy application is necessary to protect its member companies and more than 1.5 million retail members of these member companies from paying high electricity bills, and also to maintain the stability and integrity of the entire power cooperation system."
In other words, Blazouez is unwilling to pass on this high electricity cost to consumers, but they are not insolvent themselves, so they can only file for bankruptcy. Canei stressed that it is necessary for Blazouez to go bankrupt, because it can avoid the huge electricity bills owed by power distributors and end users, and can continue to provide power services.
From this point of view, Blazouez seems to have a "conscience". He would rather go bankrupt than leave the debt in his own hands, instead of pushing it on to the vast number of users. However, the state users can’t afford and won’t pay this sky-high electricity bill.
The reporter checked the public information and found that even if the cold wave has subsided, there are still millions of people in Texas with power shortages. As of March 1, local time, there are still 390,000 people without hot water available, while a few lucky people have electricity, but they are afraid to use it because of the soaring electricity bill. The local power recovery still has a long way to go. Moreover, if the problem of the sky-high electricity bill is not properly solved, it will inevitably cast a shadow of instability on local social life and economic development.