Texas leads the nation is electricity price increases during the past three years, according to study recently released by the Energy Alliance of Texas, with the high inflation of these years a major cause.
In addition, increasing subsidies through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act have poured money into what the study calls "unreliable energy" sources such as solar and wind, which work only when the sun shines and the wind blows.
But the state of Texas has a lot of work to do in helping ease the increasing power costs for Texas consumers.
And University of Houston Fellow Ed Hirs points out that the Texas Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market "had the highest electricity price of any grid last year."
"Everybody else had a much lower wholesale electricity price because of our great production of natural gas and how that drove the price down." But Texas has too much price volatility, ranging from zero to as much as $5 a kilowatt hour," he added, adding up to some very expensive electricity.
And much of the problem results from extremely tight regulations that the state holds over the ERCOT electricity markets themselves -- much too tight to allow the markets to act freely, Hirs said.
The Texas Legislature, which meets every two years, is set to reconvene in January, and a number of state senators and representatives have said they plan to make energy, and electricity markets in particular, a high priority this coming session.