Can the Texas power grid hold up to another major winter storm? Grid managers at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) assured the public on Monday that they were ready, but Texans like yours truly who suffered through days of blackouts during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri can hardly be blamed for holding our doubts.
A familiar pattern all too reminiscent of the lead-up to Uri, which encased the Lone Star State in a week-long deep freeze starting on Feb. 14, 2021, is developing in advance of the winter storm to come. Starting late last week, the forecasts for the length and severity of sub-freezing temperatures and icy conditions have grown more severe with each passing day. Similarly, a week before Uri blew in, Texans were told to expect a few days of modestly freezing weather with highs moving above the freezing mark each afternoon.
No worries, said ERCOT, the grid can handle it. That, of course, turned out not to be true. Not at all.
What Texans experienced instead was five consecutive days during which the temperature never rose above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The state’s collection of wind and solar generation dropped off the grid first, which should have surprised no one — the only predictable thing about renewables is that they will inevitably fail when they are needed most, i.e., during times of severe weather.
Next, parts of the natural gas transmission system started to freeze up, in large part because ERCOT implemented rolling blackouts without accounting for the critical infrastructure needed to keep power plants online. As natural gas plants started falling offline, major blackouts lasting days on end resulted in more than 300 Texans losing their lives.
But now, five years later, ERCOT assures Texans that the grid really is ready this time. The agency said on Monday that it “anticipates there will be sufficient generation to meet demand this winter” ahead of the coming storm. But with the forecast growing more severe by the hour, how can they know?
To be fair to the grid managers, they do have solid reasons to be more confident this time around, thanks to increased generation capacity on the grid and major reforms enacted in the wake of Uri during the 2021, 2023, and 2025 sessions of the state legislature.
One reform enacted in 2021 mandated that operators of natural gas infrastructure critical to maintain grid performance make filings with the state to identify those systems. This reform should prevent a replay of 2021, when those systems were caught up in ERCOT’s rolling blackout strategy.
The legislature and Texas Public Utilities Commission also moved to require generating facilities to winterize their plants and equipment, the lack of which led some to freeze ups in 2021.
ERCOT also has the experience of the grid’s solid performance during significant hard freezes the state has endured since 2021, most notably week-long events in both 2024 and 2025. In both events, the Texas grid came through without a glitch: No blackouts, no frozen pipelines or plants, no unfortunate fatalities.
Those 2024 and 2025 cold snaps paled in comparison to Winter Storm Uri and did not come with the same combination of days-long sub-freezing temperatures and frozen precipitation shaping up to hit Texas this weekend. But the system-wide stress test they gave the grid provides a higher level of confidence at ERCOT that the reforms enacted over the last five years are serving their intended purpose.
So, take heart, fellow Texans, your electric grid is undoubtedly in better shape today than it was on Valentine’s Day 2021. However, now is a good time to fire up that natural gas generator you bought after Uri and give it a stress test of its own, just in case.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
(Featured Image Media Credit:Â USFWS Mountain Prairie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
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