Trying to make sense of the Texas disaster. At least so far, it seems that there are no obvious villains — except the usual suspects on the right trying to blame renewable energy and environmentalists 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/us/texas-winter-storm-power-outages.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Through Chattering Teeth, Texans Criticize Extended Power Outages

“I’m kind of angry,” said one man whose family has been without power since Monday. A winter storm caused physical damage to the electrical grid’s infrastructure as well as a surge in demand.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/us/texas-winter-storm-power-outages.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Texas has a lot of wind power, mainly because it has a lot of wind, but the power failures were mainly in fossil fuel plants 2/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/
No, frozen wind turbines aren’t the main culprit for Texas’ power out…

Lost wind power makes up only a fraction of the reduction in power-generating capacity that has brought outages to millions of Texans across the state during a major winter storm.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/
Some of us immediately flashed back to the CA crisis in 2000-1, brought on in large part by market manipulation, but no evidence so far of anything like this in TX currently 3/ https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1361816960107962369
TX, unlike other states, doesn't have a capacity market to encourage reserve generation capacity, and its margins are a bit thinner than elsewhere. But as far as I can tell, not enough difference to have avoided this disaster 4/ https://cpowerenergymanagement.com/why-doesnt-texas-have-a-capacity-market/
Why doesn't Texas have a Capacity Market? - CPower Energy Management

When the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) established Texas’ deregulated energy market in 1999, it had several very Texan ideals in mind. For starters, the market’s architects sought...

https://cpowerenergymanagement.com/why-doesnt-texas-have-a-capacity-market/
Will keep working on this. But so far the lesson seems to be that extreme weather events — which are becoming more common thanks to climate change — can overwhelm any system unless you take expensive precautions 5/
You can follow @paulkrugman.
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