What's Wrong With the Texas Power Grid? Is Wind to Blame?

What's Wrong With the Texas Power Grid?

⏱Read time: 1 minute

Millions of Texans lost power recently because of cold temperatures, and thousands of people remain without power, according to poweroutage.us. This is certainly an emergency, but there has been confusion over what caused this. One side says that natural gas pipes froze while others put the blame on frozen wind turbines. So, which is causing Texans to lose power? It might be both.

According to The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), most of Texas's energy comes from sources such as natural gas and coal. Newsweek and Statistica claim that about 23% of Texas's energy comes from wind, and wind turbines did freeze. Newsweek's article about the Texas power grid goes more in-depth about the freezing of wind turbines.

The problem with Texas's power isn't due to a specific resource but a lack of preparation. Texas rarely gets temperatures this cold, so they weren't prepared. In the future, Texas needs to make sure they are ready for cold weather.

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