{"id":170305,"date":"2021-02-24T22:41:01","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T03:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=170305"},"modified":"2021-02-24T22:59:10","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T03:59:10","slug":"texas-lt-gov-suggests-residents-gambled-with-variable-rate-energy-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/texas-lt-gov-suggests-residents-gambled-with-variable-rate-energy-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Lt. Gov Suggests Residents \u2018Gambled\u2019 With Variable-Rate Energy Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftexas-lt-gov-suggests-residents-gambled-with-variable-rate-energy-plans%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=170305&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Dan-Patrick.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span>Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R-TX) told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UONyL2QmYYU\">Fox News<\/a> on Wednesday that the Texas residents who have been receiving extravagant energy bills gambled on typically inexpensive variable-rate plans, and that Texas may even ban the types of variable plans that resulted in such spikes.<\/span><span><br \/><\/span><span><br \/><\/span><span>\u201cI saw the story about the high bills. Let me explain that,\u201d Patrick told Fox News host Harris Faulkner. \u201cIn Texas, you can choose your energy plan, and most people have a fixed rate. If they had a fixed rate per kilowatt hour, their rates aren\u2019t going up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cTheir bill may be going up because they used more energy<\/span> <span>\u2014<\/span> <span>because they had the heat up when they had the power back<\/span> <span>\u2014<\/span> <span>but the people who are getting those big bills are people who gambled on a very very low rate,\u201d added Patrick.\u00a0<\/span><span>The lieutenant governor emphasized that Texans who receive such extravagant bills should \u201cnot panic,\u201d and that the government would find out what exactly happened. \u201cBut going forward, people need to read fine-print in those kind of bills and we may even end that type of variable plan, because people were surprised,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>After days of severe weather in Texas last week, some Texas residents on variable power plans, such as Griddy, reported racking up extremely high energy bills. According to<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/02\/20\/us\/texas-storm-electric-bills.html\"><span>The New York Times<\/span><\/a><span>, one Griddy customer was charged $16,752 for electricity. (Griddy itself encouraged its 29,000 customers to find a different utility provider early last week so that they would avoid getting stuck with sky-high bills due to rising wholesale prices.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Over the weekend, Governor Greg Abbott said the state of Texas had a responsibility to protect residents from extreme spikes in their energy bills that resulted from the recent sub-freezing temperature, which tossed the Texas energy infrastructure into turmoil. \u201cWe are moving quickly to alleviate this problem and will continue to work collaboratively throughout this week on solutions to help Texas families and ensure they do not get stuck with skyrocketing energy bills,\u201d said Abbott.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The Public Utilities Commission of Texas has prohibited utility companies from cutting off electricity for consumers due to non-payment. The commission has also encouraged utility companies to \u201cdelay invoicing\u201d for consumers and small commercial customers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cWe had incredible weather, it was 20 degrees below in West Texas with the windchill; we\u2019ve never had anything like that,\u201d Patrick told Faulkner on Fox News. \u201cBut we were told by ERCOT that they were ready. They were obviously not ready. We\u2019re going to go everywhere we need to go to get the evidence, and that includes something, Harris, that we seldom do, and that is use subpoena power. If we have witnesses we believe that need to come to the table, and they will not come and testify, then we have the opportunity to issue a subpoena.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI\u2019m personally taking this on my back, as the president of the Senate, where the legislation will, as well as the House, come through,\u201d Patrick told Faulkner. \u201cNo nonsense, no excuses, we\u2019ve got to fix this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a<\/span><\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em><span>member<\/span><\/em><\/a><em><span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R-TX) told Fox News on Wednesday that the Texas residents who have been receiving extravagant energy bills gambled on typically inexpensive variable-rate plans, and that Texas &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2274182,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Dan-Patrick.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Texas Lt. Gov Suggests Residents \u2018Gambled\u2019 With Variable-Rate Energy Plans","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Dan-Patrick.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Texas Lt. Gov Suggests Residents \u2018Gambled\u2019 With Variable-Rate Energy Plans","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2274182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}