More specifics:
Centerpoint is charging Minnesota natgas customers a surcharge specific to the Feb 2021 event. It is a line item listed as the 'Feb 2021 Weather Event' on the October and November bills with a per-therm surcharge. The surcharge rate was different between Oct and Nov.
Xcel Energy has also recently added a "February 2021 Weather Event - Pricing Event Surcharge" to their MN natgas rate book:
Much electric generation depends on natgas.
Xcel Energy is charging at least one wholesale electric customer in Colorado a highly increased 'fuel cost adjustment' (FCA). As this wholesale customer is an electric co-op, they will pass this on to their own retail customers.
https://www.gvp.org/FCA
Xcel also has FCAs on their retail electric customer bills; it would not surprise me to see those also be moved upwards, even if they don't itemize out the reason for increase as being the Feb 2021 event. Increases in these FCAs may be constrained by state level PUCs, but the utility workaround is the duration.
Other utilities also have added surcharges:
Gas surcharge:
https://www.minnesotaenergyresources.com/company/tariffs/swcr.pdf
Gas and electric surcharges in Cedar Falls, IA due to the price spike from the same event.
It is possible that some US utilities may not add surcharges, or if they do add them, they may disguise them under existing fuel cost adjustment charges rather than as highly visible line items. A large jump in surcharges may be an indicator this is happening.
Although the cold weather event was not limited to the Texas area, the problems of frozen-out natgas supply infrastructure and electric infrastructure (which are interdependent) were concentrated on equipment operated by entities in Texas. Surely the weather event increased demand to some degree; at the same time a sudden loss of natgas supply compounded the demand pressure on the remaining supply, and both factors combined to drive a market price spike. The severe weather event itself was unavoidable* but survivable; the frozen infrastructure issues were clearly preventable.
*Unavoidable, if one ignores the possibility the event may have been a side effect of human-activity-induced climate chaos.
Yeah, some additional specifics about this would be helpful.
I see no new charges on my nat gas gas bills in my state (NY) going back 4 months that I still had laying around.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 12:32 AM Haudy Kazemi via NANOG <
nanog@nanog.org> wrote:
Yet, in spite of claims of TX being an island, customers all over the country are now being forced to pay energy surcharges specifically tied to the Feb 2021 TX event. It was a line item on my last bill.