I admire the commitment to the bit. Beyond that, you’re on your own.
The company that took over the defunct Enron brand, led by a “Birds Aren’t Real” cofounder, held a mostly satirical quarterly earnings call Thursday afternoon but gave updates to an application to become a legitimate Texas energy provider.
“I’m super honored to be the CEO of this great company. You know, this company has a legendary history, and some of it’s good and some of it’s bad, and that’s fine. That’s real,” Connor Gaydos, Enron’s 28-year-old CEO, said. “Enron’s name has always carried weight, and one thing that defines us is that we don’t run from that.”
The majority of the meeting was presented as comedy and filled with sight gags. Many of the claims of earnings and the accomplishments of its alleged board were unsubstantiated.
DJ Withee, chief operating officer and legal counsel at HGP Storage, a company developing utility-scale battery storage farms, was introduced as Enron’s vice president of energy service. Withee said he was brought on by Gaydos to set up the customer-facing energy services business.
Enron Energy Texas LLC, a subsidiary of Enron, filed to become a Texas retail electric provider in January. Gaining this designation would allow Enron to sell electricity plans to Texas consumers.
“Our business model is actually going to be very simple,” Withee said. “We buy wholesale electricity, just like everybody else, but because of our efficiency, because of our use of technology, we are going to have lower costs than our competitors. Lower costs means greater savings that we can pass back to our customers.”
Ed Hirs, University of Houston energy fellow and economist, said a retail electric provider is a middleman that purchases electricity from power generators or other wholesale sources, determining the rates and plan structures for consumers.
“What they’re trying to do is match electricity consumption habits to you,” Hirs said.
Withee said Enron filed a motion Thursday with the Public Utility Commission of Texas and expects the company will have an answer by the end of July.
[…]
Hirs said Enron’s promise to provide cheaper electricity to Texans is not any different from anything else other retail electric providers offer.
“The fact of the matter is, they are just a middleman, and they can’t make electricity cheaper than it is,” Hirs said.
Hirs said as a provider, Enron would either be contracting with a power company, offering lower prices at a deficit to themselves, or monitoring the wholesale market every day for the most affordable option, but in either case, they have no control over the electricity that is ultimately dispatched to customers.
See here for the previous update. I am obviously amused at some level by their performance art. I’m fascinated at a whole different level by their attempt to mix in a serious business alongside their silliness. Even more fascinating is the idea that people might take them seriously enough to become customers. Or their employees, working on something as mundane but useful as retail consumer energy plans. I suppose that might be a better business model than what they were doing under Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow. We’ll see what the PUC makes of their application.