It’s interesting...we kind of watch in wonder with Texas struggling with this weather. Here in Wyoming, I’ve seen -40F for days, but of course...we’re prepared for that kind of weather. There are at least 3 very large oil refineries across the country that have shut down due to cold temperatures, but we continue to produce (still cold...however!).
This isn’t any cut on Texas (I like the state), but they might want to consider a minimum amount of winterization efforts on power plants and refineries just to sustain operations to at least 0F.
I'm in the Dallas area and the issue doesn't have anything to do with snow or ice but rather lack of power generation causing ERCOT to force rolling blackouts to customers, some of which lasted days. The generation gaps are due to several contributing factors but mostly just extreme cold temperatures not experienced 99.99% of the time. We hit -2 F in Dallas on Tuesday morning, which is the 2nd coldest recorded temp tying a record from 1949. Our houses here are not built to the same spec as those in North Dakota for instance, mostly with regard to plumbing and insulation.
47% of ERCOT managed generation is natural gas fueled. The natural gas pipes, well-heads, valves, controls, etc. are not thermal-conditioned like they are up north. As a result, a significant amount of natural gas generation was offline due to frozen equipment.
20% is coal, which dwindles every year due to EPA restrictions, taxes, etc.
20% is wind, which has been growing exponentially over the past couple of decades, mostly because of federal and state government subsidies. Over half of the wind generation was offline due to frozen turbines. That contributed 7k or so MW drop alone.
11% is Nuclear, and that's huge considering there's only 2 nuclear plants in the state. One of those nuclear sites (South Texas) was offline due to the extreme cold. Honestly, it's extremely rare for these temps to exist on the Texas coast.
The other 2% is solar, hydro, biomass, etc. Solar was affected due to snow-covered panels but not a huge factor.
There was a 15000-30000 MW generation gap starting early Monday morning and lasting into Wednesday morning.
Unfortunately, there's no overnight fix for this. Generation shortfalls have occurred in extreme heat as well several years back. With more and more people moving here, and with nobody building any new generation other than renewables, it's going to take some significant changes to get things on the right track.
Imagine if we took those renewable subsidies and diverted them into upgrades at existing gas generation facilities. We should also build more nuclear power plants, in my opinion.
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