I work for a bank in risk.<p>The premise of the article is correct.<p>Risk is cost. A company that can manage their risks better face less costs and ones that can eliminate the risk altogether (for example by passing it to their customers) fares even better.<p>Normally, companies like Griddy buy financial products (which I help build) that let them insulate themselves from some portion of that risk. These products are not sold for free, obviously.<p>When you buy an insurance it is understood that the insurance company is going to make some money on it. You buy insurance because you want to insulate yourself from an event that could potentially cripple your finance, living standards or future prospects for a long time.<p>By passing the risk to their clients, Griddy did not have to pay for any kind of insurance or hedge against market volatility in any way.<p>Unfortunately, people who bought this were not savvy enough to understand they need to insure themselves in some way and that this is not really worth it.<p>It does not help that it is apparently not that easy to change where you buy energy when nobody wants new clients and would gladly get rid of the ones they already have.<p>---<p>I am not from US and I also don't know energy markets, but my understanding is that these kinds of markets are going to be volatile because of basic fact that energy demand is quite inelastic.<p>Normally, when the demand is elastic and the price goes up, some people would decide to stop buying thus keeping some kind equilibrium between supply and demand at some sensible price.<p>Unfortunately, most people will not decide to stop heating their houses when demand is not able to meet supply and this means energy market can behave in an extremely volatile way.<p>What I wonder is where are businesses, industry, factories that I think should normally consume most of the energy and should be first to switch off when supply falls.<p>People wanted energy to be deregulated? I personally think basic necessities that people absolutely need to have should be regulated to some degree. You don't want to wake up and find a medicine you need to sustain your life just went 10000 percent up because of some random market event or that your hospital suddenly can't buy energy because it is too expensive.<p>Some systems (like home budgets or small businesses) are built on a very tight margins and are really sensitive to that kind of volatility. Maybe large companies can absorb large swings in prices but normal people should not be living in fear that their livelihood is going to be taken from them for some random market swing or AI decision.