AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Texas Attorney General said Monday he is suing electricity supplier Griddy for passing huge bills to its customers during last month’s winter storm.
The lawsuit comes days after the Texas power grid operator effectively shut down Griddy by withdrawing access to the state’s electricity market.
Griddy charges $ 10 a month to give people a way to pay wholesale electricity prices instead of a flat rate. But when the temperature plummeted below freezing last month, wholesale prices soared, leaving Griddy customers with skyrocketing electricity bills.
“Griddy has tricked Texans into enlisting them for services that in times of crisis have resulted in individual Texans losing thousands of dollars each,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “While Texans struggled to survive this winter storm, Griddy made the suffering worse as it wrote off inordinate amounts every day.”
The lawsuit accused Griddy of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and seeking refunds for customers. The unusually severe winter storm covered much of Texas with snow, cutting out electricity to 4 million customers and many are struggling to find clean water
Meanwhile, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, transferred about 10,000 Griddy customers to other utility companies on Friday.
Griddy said in a statement that ERCOT “has taken our members and effectively closed Griddy.”
“We have always been transparent and customer-focused every step of the way. We wanted to keep fighting for our members to get relief and that hasn’t changed, ”the statement said.