Just so there is no confusion about the historic severity of the weather — century-old records were being broken every day across the state for the “lowest” high and low temperatures for the date. No one in Texas ever lived through a cold snap like that before. This raises the rhetorical question of whether the state should have planned ahead for something that had never happened before. //

To avoid issues of federal regulation, the Texas power grid is entirely localized within the state of Texas and is controlled by the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). All transmission and production facilities are found within the physical borders of Texas so there is no interstate transmission of power. Municipalities and energy cooperatives are the retailers who buy power from the generators and sell it to the consumers in their areas. //

There is always water vapor present in natural gas flowing through a pipeline. When that temperature inside the pipe drops below freezing, the water vapor will begin to form ice on the inside of the pipeline, and this ice will continue to build up until the pipeline becomes choked or blocked completely, cutting off the flow of gas to boil the water that spins the steam turbines. //

the last “weather” related phenomenon which impacted the Texas energy system was the sustained drought in 2011, which left many generation facilities with inadequate water supplies to run the generation plants. That summer there were 100 days of weather across the state when daytime temperatures went over 100 degrees, and the lack of water created limitations on generating capacity.

Investment by network participants to prevent power shortages during the last decade focused on that problem — hence the increased investment in wind and solar generating capacity which do not rely on available supplies of water.