Economic impact of this week's freeze should pale next to that of February 2021 winter storm
Shoppers picked up holiday gifts at Fundamentally Toys in Rice Village on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2022.It has been a busy week for Kirsten Stokes and Stokes Hardware & Supply in Northside.
The arctic cold front that arrived in Houston Thursday afternoon and pushed temperatures overnight Friday from the mid-60s to the low teens had a mixed impact on the regional economy, stimulating sales as consumers rushed to stock up on supplies as it triggered spotty power outages that brought some business to a halt for a time.
“Absolutely,” said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow with the University of Houston. “Primarily because we haven't lost power. That's the biggest issue.”He contrasted the current situation to the one Texans faced in February 2021, when electricity prices skyrocketed to $9,000 per megawatt hour and stayed there for days, even after the market began to normalize, working out to billions of dollars in costs now being passed on to ratepayers.
This year, Hirs said, the spike in the real-time price for power was steep but not quite so dramatic, jumping to $2,312.22 per megawatt hour at 6:35 a.m. Friday from about $98 per megawatt hour at 4:15 a.m.This year's freeze did not result in widespread blackouts. As of mid-afternoon Friday, some 2,000 outages had been reported among nearly 2 million customers in Harris County, a blackout rate of just 0.1 percent, though industry was affected.
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