I'm super-busy with work and then this whole pie chart thing came up, so I'm sad to miss out on the Texas hot takes, but I'll compress mine down to just a few bullet points (surely they are just repeats of what the other smart folks are saying):

-There are two properties of electricity systems that are at odds: low cost & high reliability. 99% of the time, we talk about lowering the cost of normal operation, but these events remind us of the other side of the ledger. Lots of our grid is built just to meet extreme cases.

-Fundamentally, we have to make system-level decisions about reliability that affect everyone. More reliability = more cost (that someone has to pay). How much redundancy and backup do you want? Good or bad decisions can be made under any system, market-based or centralized.

-This isn't the fault of wind. Simple thought experiment: Would it still have happened if ERCOT had zero wind? Yes. ERCOT doesn't rely much on wind for capacity. With zero wind, ERCOT would have only a bit more firm capacity and the same problems as today.

-What will change from this? I think the first thing is that wholesale buyers of electricity will think more seriously about contract terms for non-delivery of power. There are a lot of generators forced offline that had committed their power to (very unhappy) buyers.

(cont) I presume that contract terms currently say that the generator has to pay for balancing energy on the market, but what if that energy can't be bought at any price or can't be delivered? I expect off-takers to demand better proof of reliable delivery under extreme events.

Apart from those point (for which I tried to come up with points that were most different than what other people would say), I'm sure that I agree with whatever the consensus on #energytwitter happens to be...

PS: My understanding from smart climate science folks is that we aren't sure if this specific jet stream cold snap is an expected climate thing. But the whole issue with climate change is that we *don't know* what is coming. We have to plan for new and unknown weather patterns.

PS2: While the outages here are not due to renewables, the situation puts a point on the importance of reliability under high-stress periods. Current grids are pretty good on reliability. A high-RE smart grid of the future needs to meet or beat that standard - a tough job.