A quick primer on Texas government and our power grid. For those outside the lone star state who are watching, and those who are in the state who never took college level Texas Government, once part of the core curriculum for post secondary education at most Texas schools.

First off, the Governor is very weak from a statutory point, compared to most other states. “First among equals” is more accurate. The Lt governor may actually wield more power as the president of the Texas senate.

We have a Governor, A Lt Governor, A Land Commisioner, a board of education, & others. Attached is a list. Some on the list are elected, some appointed by the gov but he cant fire them. He can appoint replacements when their term expires. This is intentional and by design.

the legislature meets for 120 days every other year. This is also by design. The governor can call a special session but the ONLY things up for consideration during such a session are the items on the agenda by the governor. No other business can be considered.

State legislators get paid a small stipend when in session only, and other than a budget for their staffs, they are intended to be ordinary Texans who come, serve the state, then go home. In realty only folks who can afford to leave their jobs 3 months out of the year can do it.

Again this is by design, dating to the postbellum/reconstruction era with an intent to keep power from being concentrated in any one entity. Checks and balances taken to an extreme.

Now... electricity in Texas.. Texas in the pre WWII era consisted of multiple local grids..during wartime they began to interconnect for reliability to support the nationwide effort and after WWII chose to remain interconnected. Two major interconnected areas merged into one

This large area grid is managed by what ultimately became ERCOT. It is a nonprofit 503C4 entity. It is regulated /overseen by the Texas Public Utility commission. And the Texas legislature. The Texas governor has NO direct day to day authority over PUC or ERCOT.

The ERCOT grid area is for all practical and functional purposes isolated and not interconnected to other areas of the nation. This can be good and bad. For the past few days we have seen what “bad” looks like... In Spades.

Our major problem here was precipitated by a perfect storm of events that conspired to make this crisis. Let me clarify my experiences are from living in the Houston region for 40 years. We are not equipped for this level of cold here, for this long.

Just from a transportation standpoint, our already weak public transportation system shuts down for a hard freeze. We dont have snowplows here. We dont have mountains of salt to be scattered behind plows... We have a limited quantity of brine they can treat roads with.

Our freeways here have LOTS of elevated bridges and flyovers. Go to New England or places where its cold and they have cloverleafs that dont freeze up as easy... So anyways... those without access to cars get stranded.

Usually when I say hard freeze it means less than high 20’s, and its usually overnight for a few hours.. and its a few times a year. They brine the roads... and in the morning its over. If it stays cold, and we have precip, the brine washes away and the roads ice up

So even folks with cars are disadvantaged when we have a lasting freeze..its dangerous to get out... and by and large unless they are a transplant from the north they have NO idea how to drive on frozen roads...

So for all practical purposes people are stuck home. Speaking of home, most modern Texas homes are built as all electric, or electric dependent. Even if they have natural gas the appliances that use it are electronic in their control scheme.

So the gas fired heater requires electricity for it to work, to blow air, etc. We have natural gas fired heaters in some places, LP fired heaters in others, but mostly electric... And with a record cold, people are trying to heat their homes using more electricity and gas ever

So record demand. Now.. power supply... Wind is less than 10% of our supply in the winter, and I’ve heard that our turbines down here dont have built in deicing... Which given the rarity of icing sounds like a good business decision to keep costs down...

So wind power wasn’t really all that helpful this week here... Next, we have some nuclear generation. At least one nuclear unit was offline for reasons I am unaware of... But nuclear covers about 20% of our generation when fully up.

That leaves coal, gas and oil fired plants. Coal is about another 20-25% roughly if I read right.. the rest is mostly gas. Solar is less than 1%.

So back to all those homes trying to heat up.. Lots of gas being used by residential gas customers... and lots (and i mean LOTS) of electricity being used by everyone to try and stay warm...

Natural gas is distributed at a very high pressure, then goes through a regulator that drops it to a lower pressure for regional distribution, then finally the end user has a regulator of their own that drops it to a useful working pressure.

To keep it simple since most Americans aren’t scientifically literate enough to remember, let alone apply the physics, if everything else remains constant, if you take compressed gas and drop the pressure, it get colder. The bigger the drop, the colder it gets.

Natural gas can “freeze”. The ice is composed of “hydrates”. I’m not a petroleum engineer, but I know folks who are. Let me put it into perspective. You are having a crawfish boil and you have your mega-jet propane burner cooking your tank..

You can freeze up your regulator on a hot sunny day to the point your gas flow obstructs and you cant cook your mud bugs. Now.. imagine that on an industrial scale, with gas thats already chilled by piping that is below freezing. The more you try to flow the bigger the drop..

And there you have why many megawatts of Texas gas fired electricity generation dropped offline at the worst possible moment. During the greatest need. From an infrastructure that was not adequately protected against such a rare but extreme event.

Managed by a grid that’s not regulated by federal rules because it’s intrastate, overseen by a limited government.

And because we aren’t grid tied to the rest of the nation we can’t energy from outside our grid. But don’t worry, our most vulnerable are paying the biggest price for this.

Our middle class is simply having to camp out in their dark houses with sponge baths from snow melt.

If their generac isn’t able to get enough gas that is.