Texas' Power Grid Trouble is Far from Over

Many Texans are still reeling from the power outage crisis that occurred earlier this year.

And "It's not just about Texas," says an environmental engineer. It's about the need to rethink our aging energy infrastructure throughout the U.S. Here’s why—and how it may be a sign of things to come.

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Produced by:
Ari Daniel

Production assistance:
Christina Monnen and Amanda Willis

Archival:
ERCOT, NOAA, Shutterstock, Storyblocks
arbyreed/flickr/CC BY 2.0
kishjar/flickr/CC BY 2.0
Larry D. Moore/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 4.0
NuclearVacuum/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 3.0
Siemens Pressebild/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 3.0
Tony Webster/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 2.0
Texas by Linseed Studio from the Noun Project
NASA Earth Observatory, National Weather Service
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center SVS

Music: APM

Special Thanks: John Watlington

© WGBH Educational Foundation 2021

[Darrylx]

It's expensive to protect your critical infrastructure from rare events that seldom occur.
But it's F_CKING expensive when you don't.

[thezfunk]

I like how he glossed over the 'various reasons' they didn't winterize their grid after the wake-up call in 2011. Yeah, let's take a closer look into that. That's where the blame needs to lie.

[SolaceEasy]

Y'all danced around the main issue: Energy lobbyists completely dominate Texas politics. This is not equitable.

[neub]

Superb report. I work in energy efficiency and utility planning, and this overview better explains what happened than a lot of highly technical publications managed to explain.

[SSB]

Rolling blackout? My power went out at 1AM Monday morning and I didn't get it back until Friday at 4PM.

[That-Guy_]

My Tesla solar panels and powerwalls got me through the 44hr Houston blackout
☀️⚡🏡

[syramento]

I retired December 31st after 35 years as a grid operator in both the Eastern and Western Interconnections. If the Texas operators have even half of the emergency operations training that I had, then they would have been able to restore a completely collapsed system in 12 to 24 hours, not the weeks implied in the video.

[stephenbrand]

Texas is what happens when energy companies get to make all the rules and write the laws that regulate energy companies.

[harperwelch]

I believe that they forgot to mention that 110 lives were lost in that Texas disaster.

[mikemalone]

Thankfully I live in East Texas and our county is one of the few not served by ERCOT! We only lost power when some of our many trees iced and broke down power lines. I was disappointed to see that ERCOT is apparently only interested in keeping those part of the profits that should have been sent to making the infrastructure more stable. And I guess that is why so many of the overpaid ERCOT executives resigned immediately after the crisis! When someone is paid over $100, 000.00 a year and they failed to do their jobs, the6 should be tried as a criminal, as that is what they are.

[shmehfleh]

"We're an example of what happens when you ignore reality" should be Texas' state motto.

[rptyn]

They have known for years what needs to be done but choosing instead to keep their wallets fat instead of helping the people they "serve"

[ioio]

Texas did not have a sufficient base load capability. Wind and solar are not base load capable generators.

[reidflemingworldstoughestm]

Puff piece ...an eight minute tour of a broom closet that assiduously avoids brushing up against the elephant: Texas state politicians in bed with the utilities industry, rolling back regulation and business practices that could have easily prevented dozens of lives and billions of dollars lost by the consumers.

[rbeaubien]

130 billion dollar bill. All because elected officials decided not to hook the Texas grid to the rest of the country. Given the behavior of officials such as Cancun Cruise I doubt little will change.

[mackenzielee]

From a real Texan Lol: We had power off and on you could say for the first day, it would turn on for an hour then go off for an hour. The time span went lower each time like on for 3 minutes off for an hour, until we had no power at all. For two days we were trying to stay warm with no water and no power in a 30-40 degree house. Yes, we did have a fireplace and we did have a fire in it but that wasn’t enough. This went on for a few days until, we got 1-2 minutes of power every 2 hours on the 3rd or 4th day. CPS energy was saying that they were giving us power but 1-2 minutes WAS IT. After the power came on after almost freezing we still had NO WATER this went on for about a week and 1/2. 1/10 would not go through again.

[vernalc]

You GET what ya vote for! Remember this next election!

[blogintonblakley]

Does this mean that we are going to treat Texas like Puerto Rico or Flint Michigan, now?

[mowcowbell]

If only Texas was part of the SPP (Southern Power Pool), they could averted this disaster by getting power from surrounding states that share their generating capacity. Just across the Red River, power remained on even though the weather was even worse.

[slvsfr]

"Low income communities tend to be more vulnerable in a crisis like this..." The swirling graphic at the end was awesome.