Griddy
Table of Contents

⚠ Disclaimer: This entry may be incomplete, out of date, or inaccurate. It is AI-maintained on a best-effort basis. Do not rely on it as a sole source — verify claims independently using the sources listed below.

Glossary

  • REP — Retail Electric Provider; a company licensed to sell electricity to customers in a retail-choice market like Texas’s. Griddy was one.
  • ERCOT — Electric Reliability Council of Texas; the grid operator that sets the real-time wholesale price Griddy passed through to customers, and that later removed Griddy from the market.
  • PUCT — Public Utility Commission of Texas; the regulator that set the $9,000/MWh wholesale price cap in effect during the storm, and that Griddy publicly blamed for its collapse.
  • Wholesale price / wholesale pass-through — The price power generators are paid in real time on the grid operator’s market; Griddy charged customers this price directly, plus a flat fee, instead of a fixed retail rate.
  • Provider of Last Resort (POLR) — A backup electric provider Texas automatically assigns customers to if their REP exits the market or goes under, as happened to Griddy’s remaining customers.
  • Chapter 11 bankruptcy — A U.S. legal process allowing a company to reorganize or liquidate its debts under court supervision; Griddy used this to wind down and resolve customer claims.
  • kWh / MWh — Kilowatt-hour / megawatt-hour; units of energy used to price electricity (1 MWh = 1,000 kWh).

Summary

Griddy was a Texas retail electric provider (REP) that sold electricity at real-time ERCOT wholesale prices plus a flat $9.99 monthly membership fee, using an app to let customers track prices and self-manage usage — effectively putting ordinary homeowners directly on the wholesale market that companies like [Base Power](/research/energy/batteries/base-power/) now operate batteries against. The model worked in normal conditions but had no circuit breaker: during Winter Storm Uri (see [Winter Storm Uri](/research/energy/grid-markets/winter-storm-uri/)) in February 2021, ERCOT's wholesale price was held at its $9,000/MWh cap for days, and Griddy’s roughly 29,000 customers were collectively billed about $29 million for that one week — some individual bills exceeded $9,000, with reported cases as high as $15,000. Griddy was ejected from the ERCOT market for nonpayment on February 26, 2021, sued by the Texas Attorney General on March 1, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 15. A finalized settlement in August 2021 released roughly 24,000 former customers from their outstanding bills. The company did not survive; it remains defunct as of this review.

Key Facts

  • Founded: Founded around 2017 (Griddy LLC reported as incorporated in 2016); Texas Tribune describes the company as Houston-based, though some sources place its parent entity’s registered address outside Texas — location details are not fully consistent across sources and should be treated as unverified beyond “Houston-based Texas operations”
  • Founders: Gregory (Greg) Craig and Nick Bain
  • CEO (2021): Michael Fallquist
  • Type: Defunct wholesale-indexed Texas Retail Electric Provider
  • Business model: $9.99/month membership fee (residential; scaled for commercial customers) plus a direct pass-through of real-time ERCOT wholesale electricity prices, with an app providing price alerts and usage tracking
  • Scale at time of collapse: Approximately 29,000 customers
  • Storm billing: Customers were collectively charged approximately $29 million for electricity during the week of Winter Storm Uri; individual bills reported in the thousands of dollars, with some exceeding $9,000 and at least one reported case above $15,000
  • Market ejection: ERCOT removed Griddy from the market on February 26, 2021 for failing to pay more than $29 million it owed ERCOT; Griddy’s remaining customers were transferred to “Provider of Last Resort” (POLR) electric companies
  • Legal/financial outcome: Sued by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on March 1, 2021 (Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, price gouging); filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy March 15, 2021; finalized settlement August 30, 2021 released roughly 24,000 former customers with outstanding bills from those debts, and permanently enjoined Griddy and parent Griddy Holdings from false or misleading retail electricity advertising
  • Status: Defunct; no evidence found of a relaunch or asset acquisition as of this review

What It Was / How It Worked

Griddy’s pitch inverted the standard retail electricity relationship: instead of a fixed monthly rate that bakes in a margin to protect the retailer from wholesale price swings, Griddy charged only a flat $9.99 membership fee and passed the real-time ERCOT wholesale price straight through to the customer’s bill. Its app showed customers the current and forecast wholesale price so they could shift usage to cheap hours or, in theory, switch providers ahead of an anticipated price spike. Griddy’s public defense of the model — articulated by co-founder Gregory Craig in the company’s bankruptcy statement — was that it had worked as intended during a prior price spike in August 2019, and would have worked in February 2021 too “had the grid not failed and the regulators not intervened.” In effect, Griddy’s business depended on ERCOT’s price cap never being sustained at its maximum for an extended period; Uri broke that assumption.

Griddy did not itself set or benefit from the spike — Craig maintained the company “did not profit from increased prices and only made money off of the fixed monthly membership fees” — but it also built in no mechanism to cap customer exposure once the wholesale price hit its regulatory ceiling. Customers who didn’t (or couldn’t, given how fast conditions changed) switch providers during the storm had thousands of dollars automatically drafted from bank accounts or charged to credit cards over a period of days.

Key People

Gregory (Greg) Craig — Co-founder of Griddy. Conceived and launched Griddy while serving as CEO of Star Energy Partners, an East Coast residential retail electric provider he has led since 2015 and still runs today as CEO and board member. Earlier in his career he founded and led wholesale energy trader Cook Inlet Energy, growing it to more than $3 billion in annual revenue over ten consecutive profitable years before selling it to Macquarie Bank; he has also served as a presidential appointee and three-year advisor to President Bill Clinton, advised several U.S. Energy Secretaries, and sits on the boards of Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (CIRI) and (since 2022) Solar Integrated Roofing Corp.

  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gregory-l-craig-b196b4205
  • ⚑ Overlap: Griddy’s December 2020 financing agreement (its last leadership shuffle before Winter Storm Uri) was with Macquarie Energy — the same Macquarie Bank that had earlier acquired Craig’s prior company, Cook Inlet Energy.

Nicholas (Nick) Bain — Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Griddy. Aggregator and secondary-source data (LinkedIn, ZoomInfo/Datanyze) place him currently as Director at a solar energy venture referred to as “Sun Farms,” based in the Playa Vista, California area; this could not be corroborated against a primary company source in this session and should be treated as probable but unconfirmed. The same records describe prior roles at Star Energy Partners (alongside Craig) and at Graphite Energy.

  • LinkedIn: au.linkedin.com/in/nick-bain-67631215a (Australia-region LinkedIn domain; identity match to Griddy’s Nick Bain is probable given matching Star Energy Partners/Graphite Energy history, but not conclusively verified)
  • ⚑ Overlap: Also previously at Star Energy Partners, same as co-founder Craig.

Michael Fallquist — Not a Griddy founder; brought in as CEO on December 7, 2020, alongside Griddy’s new financing agreement with Macquarie Energy — a leadership change made roughly two months before Winter Storm Uri. Currently co-CEO of Energywell (an energy-technology holding company formed in late 2021 with backing from Oaktree Capital Management and Hartree Partners) and, since November 2022, CEO of Think Energy, a multi-state retail energy provider Energywell acquired from ENGIE Resources. Earlier career: CEO of Crius Energy (sold to Vistra Energy for roughly C$650 million), founder of Viridian Energy, and senior roles at Commerce Energy, Macquarie Bank, and Deloitte Consulting.

  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michael-fallquist
  • ⚑ Overlap: Previously worked at Macquarie Bank — the same firm that financed Griddy under his tenure and that had earlier acquired co-founder Craig’s Cook Inlet Energy.

Key People — Last Reviewed: 2026-07-09

Notable Developments

  • 2021-08-30: Texas Attorney General finalized a settlement releasing roughly 24,000 former Griddy customers from outstanding storm-related bills, and permanently barring Griddy/Griddy Holdings from misleading retail electricity advertising.
  • 2021-03-15: Griddy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, proposing a liquidation plan to wipe out former customers’ outstanding storm-related debt; laid off half of its roughly 30-person staff, having already lost its entire customer base.
  • 2021-03-01: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Griddy under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, alleging price gouging.
  • 2021-02-26: ERCOT ejected Griddy from the wholesale market for nonpayment of more than $29 million owed; remaining customers were transferred to Provider of Last Resort utilities.
  • 2021-02-15 to 2021-02-19: During Winter Storm Uri, Griddy’s ~29,000 customers were collectively billed ~$29 million as ERCOT's wholesale price held at its $9,000/MWh cap.
  • 2020-12-07: Griddy announced new leadership (Michael Fallquist as CEO) alongside a financing agreement with Macquarie Energy — its last major corporate change before Winter Storm Uri, roughly two months later.

Why It’s Worth Tracking

Griddy is the clearest illustration of what happens when a retail-choice, wholesale-pass-through model meets an extended price-cap event with no consumer-side circuit breaker. It is also directly relevant to evaluating newer distributed-energy business models operating in the same market: Base Power, for instance, also profits from ERCOT wholesale price volatility, but does so on the supply side (dispatching a battery it owns) rather than by passing the raw wholesale price through to a captive residential customer with no hedge. The distinction matters for regulatory design — Griddy’s collapse is a large part of why Texas policymakers and consumer advocates now scrutinize wholesale-indexed retail plans much more closely, and why “who bears the tail risk of an extreme price event” is a live design question for any company built on top of ERCOT’s energy-only market.

Claim Verification

Claim: Griddy’s ~29,000 customers were collectively billed approximately $29 million during Winter Storm Uri

Status: Verified

Supporting sources:

  • Texas Tribune, Mar 16, 2021 — “Griddy’s approximately 29,000 customers were charged $29 million for energy during the winter storm, according to court documents”
  • Texas Attorney General settlement announcement, Aug 30, 2021 — corroborates the bankruptcy/settlement framework releasing customers from these charges; a related, separately titled AG release explicitly references “$29 Million Electric Bills” forgiven for “24,000 Texans”

Summary: Verified via court documents cited in contemporaneous reporting and corroborated by the Texas Attorney General’s own settlement announcement. Note the modest discrepancy between the ~29,000 customers at the time of the storm and the ~24,000 with outstanding bills covered by the later settlement — consistent with some customers having already paid (and thus not counted among “outstanding” balances) or having left the company between the storm and the settlement.

Claim: ERCOT ejected Griddy from the market for owing more than $29 million

Status: Verified

Supporting sources:

  • Texas Tribune, Mar 16, 2021 — “The state’s energy operator, ERCOT, forced Griddy out of the market after the company failed to pay the more than $29 million it owed to the operator.”

Summary: Verified from a single but authoritative contemporaneous news source citing court documents; the figure is consistent with (and likely the same underlying number as) the ~$29 million billed to customers, since Griddy’s wholesale exposure and its pass-through billing to customers were meant to be matched dollar-for-dollar under its business model.

Claim: Griddy’s founders and last CEO all remain active in the retail/wholesale energy industry today

Status: Partially verified

Supporting sources:

Summary: Craig’s and Fallquist’s current roles are reasonably well corroborated — Craig via his current employer’s own leadership page, Fallquist via his LinkedIn profile plus independent confirmation of the Energywell/Think Energy acquisition. Bain’s current role is sourced only to LinkedIn/data-aggregator profiles that could not be cross-checked against a primary source (e.g., a “Sun Farms” company site) in this session, and the LinkedIn profile’s Australian domain warrants some caution about identity match — treat as probable, not confirmed.

Sources

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