Why Texas is Running Out of Electricity 

My understanding is that ERCOT has no way to enforce winterization efforts. So they can _recommend_ that private companies winterize their equipment, but these companies are free to ignore them. The Texas legislature is the one at fault here.

You need to do more research before posting these videos. The problem with the blackouts over a year ago was not due to a grid that needs repairs. It was because the gas lines were not winterized. This is easily researched. Also, Wind/Solar is not an insignificant contribution to the grid. It's like 20% and it didn't fail during the winter blackout even though the windmills weren't winterized. You should do better.

Yeah As a Texan the Infrastructure is garbage. And I’m not just talking about the power grid

There's no money for upgrades and renovation but there's money for dividends, right? If the grid was exploited for almost half a century to make money with minimal investment, Texans would be really dumb if they paid for the necessary upgrade. Part of the past gains was supposed to be used for that upgrade: force companies to use *those* gains to finance it all.

This seems to completely ignore the political realities that led to the situation in Texas. These conditions exist because of decisions made by people who were elected by the citizens of Texas. A lot of this is the direct and predictable result of "deregulation". Yes, power is cheaper if you don't invest in modernization and upkeep or pay to expand the grid to match the growth in population. They chose to go with that as a policy for decades. It's like owning a car and putting zero money into maintenance and then saying it's a complicated and/or someone else's fault when it breaks down. Good job people of Texas! You got conned by listening to folks who were offering you something for nothing and the bill has finally come due.

It was a freak winter for Texas it happens once every 10-15 years or so

those blackouts were caused by lack of fuel for the natural gas plants, which was because suppliers of natural gas werent winterized. and some of the natural gas plants also went down, for the same reason. even a nuclear plant had problems with the cold (since it wasnt winterized enough). and most of the problem is rooted in the deregulated electric market. there were (and still arent any) rules to insure that electricity wouldnt fail at the worst of time.. some say no one had seen any thing like this (though about decade before it showed up during a super bowl played in Dallas. and that wasnt the first time or maybe even the most recent, that would be back in April, when rolling blackouts were possibility, again. not even winter or summer!

We actually get over 20% of our energy from wind. Drive down 77 and it’s hours and hours of wind turbines along the coast. We lead the nation in wind power investment after one or two states.

As a native Texan the real problem is everybody is moving to Texas and plugging into the same socket…what do you expect is going too happen.

In Northeast Texas, we are not supplied by the ERCOT grid. Fortunately we are connected to a national grid which hasn't failed us.

I am impressed that you managed to get through your entire analysis without mentioning "Greedy unregulated financiers who are happy to watch a bunch of red-blooded Texans buy the farm every ten years if it ups the margins by 2%". It's one of those phrases that just rolls off the tongue so my compliments to your careful editing.

The power outage in Texas, Feb 21, has roots in the run up to constructing the Glenn Rose Nuclear Power Plant in the early '70's-'80s. PUC engineers were tasked with evaluating Texas need for a new nuclear power plant near Dallas- spend 90 days ,send in a report; according to the Dallas Morning News of that time, the engineers report was a thorough condemnation about TXU's maintenance and upkeep, poor future planning, and the transmission system needed , in 1981, "billions spent on upkeep and future proofing". The PUC, granted TXU the license to build Glenn Rose and did one other thing with the Lege's help; created the Electric Reliability Council of Texas- to monitor and to see that Texas utility companies were staying close enough to snuff to avoid failure. No money was spent by the utilities or the state of Texas to repair, modify or update the transmission system- they had to do serious work in the late '80's to get enough transfer wiring to put Glenn Rose power on the grid! The "secret" is that the Utility companies long ago "captured" the Public Utility Commission in the late '60s, early '70s- the board is always ruled by a majority from executive positions at TXU or other Texas utility. You do Texas citizens no favor to let her politicians and crony capitalists go unremarked for stunts like this. BTW, ERCOT sent out a "harsh letter" to Texas utility companies after the 2011 freeze, which wasn't as catastrophic as 2021's; no action was taken, since ERCOT has never had any enforcement power, ever. In 2021 after that freeze, we finally saw what ERCOT's real purpose was; the good citizens of Texas were treated to a five hour public browbeating and general trashing of the CEO of ERCOT, Bill Magness, by none other than that lord of all Texas politicians, keeper of ultimate truth and justice, Gregg Abbott, Governor. There is lots of dirt in this deal- at least five Texas governors have played host to this series of events. Some of them may not be Republicans! FR

No mention of the effect of 20 years of having retail electric "providers" siphoning money out of the system, most of whom don't actually input power too, or otherwise contribute to the grid? Also, the Texas Railroad Commission, which is responsible for overseeing natural gas distribution is basically getting off scot-free again, just like they did in 2011. It is kinda hard to run a natural gas power station when the pipelines delivering gas to them freeze up... There were many points of failure involved, some of which almost nobody talks about.

The issue was the lack of winterization, which to be honest, didnt happen because the last time we had a freeze like this was in the 1980s. Nothing in TX is winterized, whether it's the electrical grid, homes, water/sewage, or even cities having snowplows for the roads. Does it snow in Texas? Yes. Does it reach to single digits in TX? Almost never. Did the state spend billions to winterize to an extent to prepare for an event that happens once every couple of decades? No.

@0:29 "wide spread blackouts" Texas, at least since i been alive, as only ever had one true blackout, and that was last year during the icestorm...

It's always fascinating to see when such a massive problem has such a simple solution, but it doesn't go anywhere; because in the game of politics it is money, and not people, that matter.

Nuclear power is the safest cleanest. It is the future that oil doesn’t want you to believe in

El Paso, TX had a blackout that lasted several minutes back during the deep freeze. They paid for winterizing their power equipment and they are hooked to the Western power grid.

"Fuck the customers, we don't care." "We'll let the taxpayers pay." "We got no cash flow or reserves for renewal." "We all had to spend it on reasonable bonuses or we would loose the finest and most skilled managers within the firm." (ERCOT)

Sure....Nothing to do with the 4.3mil people that flocked here in the last 10yrs. Thats more than TOTAL population of the state of Oregon or Oklahoma. Each home needs year long A/C that drives costs up and put a huge load on the grid. The were balancing on a tipping point. We're about to hit a recession and those homes are about to drop in value.

Sprawl is why the infrastructure is falling apart and why cities and states cannot maintain them. Strong towns is a good podcast or look to: not just bikes. Does a good review of them

23% wind energy and 30% nuclear and the rest is NG. Houston’s grid is new and in good condition. I would say we just don’t have the grid winterized. We just need to winterize the generation plants. More nuclear and winterize the windmills.

The problem is deregulation. The power sellers do not generate power and the power generators shut down all but the minimum needed to get through a normal Texas winter.

What was broken that needs to be fixed? That was never explained. My understanding of the Feb energy crunch was that natural gas producers didn't have cold weather precautions in place and the control systems running on compressed air froze up. If the natural gas production had continued lots of electrical power and natural gas would have been available.

Keep It Up, Nice Video

You mean our power grid failing?

Dear Texas, You are Soooo SCREWED !

Everything is bigger in Texas, except the power grid.

0:10 Old and unreliable. Also an accurate way to describe the governors, state representatives and indeed, a vast majority of politicians in the US.

It's a combination of problems. First deregulation. Big rip off. Owners of the corporations are not spending money to upgrade the old power stations. Whoever thought it was smart to privatize a public utility is just plain stupid. Also, those plants not winterized can opt out of doing so by paying a small fee, and there are still some that aren't winterized. Most of our powerplants are very old and outdated as well as the other parts of the power grid. And I'm sure just like the rest of Texas infrastructure nothing will change until there's a major change in Austin.

In my area, Oncor has been installing remotely controller grid disconnects. This would allow them to disconnect small areas if there was a shortage of electricity. So, some work has been done.

I live in San Antonio everything’s old lol

I remember Fox news reporting this and essentially they were blaming Biden and the demoracrats. They were that desperate and pathetic.

3 Key Problems Independent grid so production from other states wouldn't help the grid. Powerplants and Pipelined are not winter ready or winter safe. Outdate Grid that can cause problems with reliability.

important point about separate grid: the 60hz is not synchronized with others and younneed ac-dc-ac conversion at border Quebec is also independant but has highly developped interconnections with several US states and Ontario. we normally export a lot to usa. but in oeriods where a state has surplus, Quebec reverses flow and imports US power for dirt cheap while closing vanes at hydro plants to keep water for later. easy to adjust hydro production dynamically for when younhave solarr and/or wind (or import). nuclear/coal take hours to adjust production so end up still producting when solar/wind produce. Canada has plenty of natural gas systems and residential distribution and it doesnt freeze despite getting much colder thannTexas got.

great video

nuclear solves all the problems , yet the US continues to condemn nuclear power.

Honestly I feel like we’re running out of resources we should’ve been had more solar panels half of Texas should be covered in solar panels

Abbott is more worried about illegal immigrants than he is about the failures of the Electrical Grid System !!

"More than a year later the power grid has not been fixed." Yeah, bro, that's because even *if* Texas wanted to fix it, that's decade (or longer) project to engineer, procure, and install.

Who said that Texas was running out of electicity? We have several weeks of hot weather, and we have not had the brown out or black outs.

"... the leading power company, ERCOT is facing backlash." I'm already doubting the accuracy or truth of this video before even watching it if it describes ERCOT as a "power company".

I live south of Houston. I have lost power four times, two 12 hour intervals during winter storm and one day each after Hurricane Rita and Ike

Does the great state of Texas offer any residential solar incentive programs?

Dont forget their water crises where broken pipes lead to water outages during the heat wave. Voters need to hold politicians and the utility companies responsible. If the engineers and specialist warned them every 10 years but they keep ignoring it, this is just poor management.

How difficult would it be to add multiple HVDC links from ERCOT to the Tres Amigas Superstation in eastern New Mexico so that you could import power and stay up - like El Paso did because it is not a part of ERCOT - while this is an interim solution - it does not require "Rocket Scientists" to figure it out 🤔⚡

Texas should get the money to repair their grid from all the gas and oil corporation pull from that state.

Wind and solar are heavily subsidized here. This cuts into the profit margins for generators which supply baseline power. This in turn discourages gold plating for reliability.

Would be smarter and make them more resilient if they join one of the interconnected grids

Sorry but I don’t think you really know what you’re talking about. All of the regions around ERCOT also experienced supply shortages/ outages at the same time during the Feb 21 crisis. There was no energy to import so being part of a larger interconnection wouldn’t have helped anything. Also ERCOT has implemented several substantial market changes since the event and even bigger changes are underway. I could go on but lots of incomplete/ incorrect research here unfortunately

We have to conserve electricity and water, Texas under Abbott is a disaster.

Since 1986, Texans said; Don't mess with Texas and since then I've said Texsucks..., 😆🤣😂😹 !!!

Many proposals for new gen plants have been shot down by the PUC over the past couple of decades as well.

We'd be running everything seperately and connectively at the same time all the time. so blackouts would be extremely rare.

In my understanding, privatizing any infrastructure is a terrible idea that comes from corruptions and Texas legislators are deeply at fault.

Combine self running generators and power walls for seemingly endless clean energy everywhere all the time. Specifically the alternator magnet combo version of self running generators.

saying "the state has unique problems" is bunk Texas doesn't want outside groups looking at their grid which is why it won't get fixed they have annual problems with their power system

Alberta is Texas... Texas is Alberta. Artificially lowering your tax base to "attract jobs" does nothing for the economics of your state/province. You need sustainable sources of revenue which these places just aren't willing to commit to raising. Why? The all corrupting influence of the Petro-State... I get it but I don't like it or respect it...

Tying grids together is only for the purpose of making electric power a commodity and facilitates selling electricity to different regions. It's just a scheme to "make money". The way to build infrastructure is to isolate systems to regional areas so that it is much easier to calculate the power requirements and build for that requirement than to attempt to rely on draining power from connected systems which may be under stress also. That's why the Great Northeast Blackout occurred. I'm just north of Dallas and get service from west Texas wind farms. Areas to the south are served mostly by natural gas plants. I had a total of 5hrs of no service during the "event", most likely due to temporary local problems at transmission stations. And renewables are at 24% of total generation in Texas, the highest of any other state.

You’d think Texas would have a huge supply of sun & wind to support their energy grid with power…

Not just Texas, but the entire USA electric infrastructure needs serious repair and no one is able to do something about it and our government is not capable...

for those who are pointing fingers at utilities saying they weren't winterized i ask why do homeowners not winterize? it's also their responsibility. why were so many houses flooded? why didn't homeowners shut off their water supply at the house shutoff valves? in western ny where i live in winter i had my furnace stop working on a sat overnight by sun morning it was getting to 40 degree inside . i couldn't get a tech that day so i shut off my water at the house shutoff and drained the water in the pipes at the basement slop sink. because i have a basement it didn't get below 40 in the basement so nothing froze.

Texas is a small grid when compared to larger neighboring grids. I guess Lone Star means go it alone. The Bonneville grid in the Northwest is one of the strongest in the country. Two characteristics are responsible for this strength. Lots of standby generation that is very tolerant to weather events and a rate structure that generates adaquate funds for maintenance and upgrade. Bonneville sells its power to many customers, both public and private using the same rate structure. Some customers are also generators as well while some only resell. Bonneville is not a generator itself so it can focus on being a top notch transmission operation.

another example of the private sector negligent a system failing and than the taxpayers have to pay a premium to fix it

You said that Texas doesn’t have much renewable energy? Texas is one of the leaders of renewable energy I believe it was said that Texas relies on renewables for 31 percent of the energy. Matter fact Texas is in front of Californian in renewable energy. Full disclaimer I work for oil and gas but the problem in February was simply put everything froze and we’re not used to that kind of cold weather. Solar panels had ice and snow, windmills froze over and natural gas pipelines froze

This problem may constrain economic growth in Texas. Companies that flee other states for Texas may find that it is not the imagined Promised Land.

same time whole winter price of kwH is no more than 2 cents and people paying for that about 14 cents

ERCOT alternately described as a company, then a non-profit agency.

state cant fix it because of deregulation, that basically separated generators from those that sell it, to those who own the grid it self. none of the entities in this market have much if any interest in fixing it (and given the money that got from last years blackouts, which some say is in the multibillion dollars. and the legislature will not fix it, they just sort of make a few changes (as few as the electric market will allow).

The numbers are rounded and a little out of date but not long ago texas taxes sent 271 billion to the federal government. And was allowed to have 75 billion back for the state’s personal use. Bet the infrastructure would be pretty nice if we didn’t have to subsidize others

More battery storage for the grid vs peaker plants

the texas power grid has not been fixed because politicians are politicians and the freedom to do the stupidest thing possible is very important to real texans.

I have to wonder if this is related to the Enron Blackhole scheme. Essentially California would forecast electrical needs, and have bids for who could meet the demand at the least expense. Of course - if those forecasts were off, they could still buy power as needed, but the price would go up. Enron planned out how to sell electricity based on generation capacity, rather than grid capacity (ie there is a plant in Nevada that produces 500 MW, but only a 50 kilovolt line crosses the mountains from that plant.) Hence they could be paid upfront a low price for claiming to have electricity available, and change through the nose later during the shortfall. This is a large part of what caused the rolling blackouts in the late 90s. Electrical producers in Texas have the same perverse incentive because they can just hike up prices in an emergency and no one can compete for a better offer.

Hopefully they do the changes even if taxpayers and ratepayers have to pay more

The main problem with the Texas grid is not enough transmission line. That causes a bottleneck in the supply of electricity. Plenty of power sources. We have over 12 new large solar farms coming online this year. Instead of placing the solar farms out in west Texas they are now being built closer to the cities to avoid those bottlenecks.

Tnks to two wheels guy

Privatization of public utilities is the reason, we've been sold out by our state's leaders.

This video is so much misinformation, yes the infrastructure in texas is old and needs to be updated, and yes they passed bills to help weatherize the grid, but also you failed to mention that Texas also passed bills to build more nuclear plants, theyve invited companies like Tesla to come in and build power storage like Tesla’s Mega Pack, they need to add more power before they can expand the grid, video keeps mentioning “it’s been almost a year and nothings changed” 1 yes it has, 2 you just dont notice it yet because things take time to build 3 your video is lazy and sloppy 👎🏼

They should change the name to "Ecot" since the "r" doesn't apply anymore and is no longer reliable.

You don't "run out" of electricity...it constantly gets produced.

The question comes up: Why are Texas organizations incompetent to solve problems? Why does Texas still operate an island grid? Why is there no US national cooperation? Why is isolation preferred if this means that no support from neighboring countries is possible? Why aren't better lines built?

Texas needs to get into one of the interconnect networks. If nasty weather craters your generators, then import from NM who can import from UT who can import from ID who can import from BC and Alberta who look at your nasty weather and laugh. Your generation pool will be larger than any nasty winter storm -- that is how your grid becomes resilient.

For anyone interested in learning more about what happened and why, listen to the podcast The Disconnect.

"What's preventing the state from solving the problem?" Have you SEEN who's running it?

we produce as little electricity as possible to have cheap utility bills. I pay $50-100 a month...thats pretty damn cheap. ERCOT sent me two letters weeks before the outage warning of what may happen.. you can't have your cake and eat it too. I would rather have the cheap bills even if that means I would have to stay vigilant. This has been blown way out of proportion in my opinion, especially if you consider the constant growth for the last two decades. With that being said I must admit I feel for all the folks that have elderly family, because that is who is at risk here. so I totally understand the concern regarding that, and support measures to protect our beholders of wisdom.

The title is misleading, it should be why Texas’ grid is failing. The grid is one part of infrastructure. While not incorrect you grouped nuclear with nat gas a coal, implying they are bad like those 2. Nuclear is by far the cleanest and safest form of energy we have.

Texas runs a competitive energy market. Whatever is cheaper energy they use it if the the environmental regulations allow it. This helps keep energy prices low. Texas is the largest consumer of energy in the country, not just for households in the hot sun, but for industry. The problem isn't any different from the rest of the electrical grids in the US when it comes to old infrastructure. The problem with extreme unpredictable weather is you cannot anticipate supply to meet demand. There needs to be dispatchable energy in times of emergency. Coal/lignite and oil are the most reliable energy sources in times of deep freeze weather event. Biomass can be used. Unlike other states that uses storage to hoard LNG for the coming winter months, Texas got it's supply of natural gas in real time as it is coming from the ground. The state had no storage of natural gas to draw from, this is why the deep freeze stopped the unprotected supply line which fed the power plants. In the long term, weatherization against extreme cold I think is something they are working on, primarily the pipes, and well caps. The power plants themselves are geared primarily for the Texas heat, the opposite of freezing weather with the priority of insulation. In the long term, they need to expand the transmission lines and distribution to reduce bottlenecks. Winterstorm Uri was rare in that it was layers of protracted deep freezes and it was a damp freeze as well with sleet and snow. I think Texas with the surplus they got could be spending on the energy grid but they feel to need to spread the money around in the short-termism of democratic politics.

Until their blackout last year, I was unaware that the state was too cheap to provide gas lines to homes. It's a low-tax state and it's citizens get what they pay for.

Completely disagree infrastructure is probably the best in the county easily. Texas in #1 in wind power and 2 in solar power. The power went out because of a once in a lifetime storm. This will never happen again. This is probably the best power grid in the country considering there are no rolling blackouts. Like a lot of other states who simply don’t have enough power for their people.

Wind power froze and solar suffered by lack of sun. 23 percent of energy was lost. Out of state ERCOT board members failed to winterize our wind turbines. They resigned and fled to their home states. We need more control by Texans, not more outside Texas control.

I stayed warm by creating friction with my fist 😮

Who knew deregulation could cause problems I would have never thought

It also would have been wise to not destroy multiple gas and steam plants that produced 1000’s of MW of on-demand power production in the last 15 years to fuel a green initiative the state was not ready for. Hard to supply power when the sun isn’t shining and your windmills are frozen…

Oh and ERCOT ain’t shhhhh either. I’ve been here 30 years and never have we had issues now even when it’s 100+ they’re worried about power. Bruh 🤦🏿‍♀️

Didn't electric companies make huge profits from the big electric failure? Maybe that's why they haven't fixed it.

Don't think I'd ever move there....unless I had my own power source.

How is 24 million people 90% of the electricity needs when the population is 30 million? 24 million is only 80% of the population. Also, "prolonged for such a long period of time"? That's literally what prolonged means! I don't know who writes your scripts but they need an editor.

A pretty good chunk of the Texas "grid", which is the power lines along with the switching and monitoring of the grid is NOT old. But I would say it's problematic that the Texas grid has so few connections to ouside the state, but you really didn't even cover that correctly. For instance one of the connections coming in is still isolated from the Texas grid. That section of Texas around El Paso gets power from one or two sources but I don't think you can configure it to switch power out of that area. You then went and blamed the "infrastructure for the failure in Feb 2021. That's blatantly false. The power distribution network, the grid, had NOTHING to do with the power failure. It was the generation of power from power producers that failed, and for the most part THAT failure was the company Energy Transfers Partners, which is responsible for moving natural gas around via pipelines. That's not the grid. And it's not the "grid" that needs to be fixed, even though it has some issues and part of it needs to be modernized. But that wouldn't have helped the Feb 2021 issue. I would also add it would be BETTER that the grid was connected to a larger grid in case of emergency situations, but that probably means that the Texas grid would need to meet some kinds of federal compliance that Texas doesn't want to meet. Next, "green" or renewable energy is not tiny in Texas. Texas produces the most wind energy in the US, and on record days wind has produced about 20% of the needs for Texas households. That's pretty significant. But these wind turbines were never rated to run at those cold temps that happened for an extended period Feb 2021. But NONE of the power producers built plants that are rated to operate at temps that cold and hence the major failure of Energy Transfer Partners, which is also a national company. Ercot is responsible for the running of the grid that exists, and that's about it. They use a bidding system to control who puts power on the lines at what capacity and for what time slot. Now, this favors the lowest bidder. While this is good for the consumer when all is well, it also means some companies are not so keen to build new power production in the state because THAT kind of bidding system means you aren't going to get the kind of needed guaranteed output from your new power plant that you really need to start getting ROI. Also, Texas DOESN'T have a unique situation of having to meet very hot temperature requirements and very cold temperatures at the same time. States around Texas have the same problem. In fact in can be hotter in Missouri on certain summer days and it's certainly colder there in the winter. I heard "many reasons" and "complex" too many times in this video. I saw a documentary on this topic that was about 15 minutes long and described the entire scenario pretty completely other than the problem in getting different companies to invest in building new power plants in the state. That would have to come via the Texas legislature to deal with that issue because it would have to modify the way ERCOT handles the bidding process. But BOY did Texas legislatures try to drag the leadership of ERCOT through the mud even though they did a great job of avoiding a complete failure in the Texas grid which they had about 8 minutes to do. However, the management of how rolling blackouts happened over the new few days happened was poor, but ERCOT has to rely on local controllers for part of this and that's where the failure happened. Lastly, and the point to where I had to cut this off because I needed time to write a comment was once again pointing at ERCOT. It's NOT THEIR responsibility to fix the "grid". Funding any infrastructure to upgrade the "grid", and by that I mean the transmission of power throughout the state would require the Texas Legislature and the Governor to do, not ERCOT. ERCOT is an operator and manager, that's it. They don't even set their own rules. They operate under the rules the state gave them. So, there is nothing wrong with ERCOT, for the most part there is nothing wrong with the Texas "grid" which in many parts of the state is pretty new since there has been massive growth in the state and a good chunk of that infrastructure had to be upgraded with the growth. The problem lies in the way the state set regulation for power companies for the temperatures they have to be required to operate under, and the other main problem is how companies get power onto the grid, via a bidding process that rewards the low bidder. Modifications to these regulations along with maybe some incentives to get new power plants online would fix almost all problems, but SOME parts of the grid need to be modernized and this STILL requires the Texas legislature to fund it. So, 100% this falls on the Texas Legislature and the Texas Governor in every conceivable way. And, fixing the issue with freezing gas lines would have probably kept the Feb 2021 event from happening, but the state still would have had to deal with some rolling blackouts. And here's an idea, the Texas regulations which are almost non-existent shouldn't allow power plants to be offline Jan-Mar, and Jun-Sep for maintenance, which was ANOTHER problem in Feb 2021.

Interesting