Background: 40% of Austinites are out of power thanks to a brutal winter storm sending temperatures into single digits.
A great primer on what’s happening right now and who needs to improve for next year:
TLDR: This is not a new issue. Power plants need better incentives to weatherize against cold as 70-80 power plants (of every type) providing 45,000 MW are out of service due to the freeze. For comparison, all of Texas right now is using 43,000 MW, so this is a big problem.
Our interconnects with other grids aren’t providing us enough power since they are also having weather issues. Throw in fallen power lines, dangerous road conditions for work crews, astronomical residential demand, high natural gas prices (typically 1M BTU is $2.50, but now its $600), and you have a recipe for widespread outages.
Luckily, ERCOT (which manages the grid and the market but not power plants or local utilities) is doing all the right things to avoid a catastrophic grid failure, which did happen up north in 2003 and took out 8 states, parts of Canada, and 50,000,000 people.