What a horrible article. First, Texas has its own independent grid as a matter of physics. Electricty travels at the speed of light so a continuous grid from coast to coast would get out of sync on phases just by travel distance. Texas just happens to be physically in the middle and large enough to have trouble by being supplied by either east or west grid. Second, ERCOT manages when utilizes can take assets out of commission to do maintenance. Texas peak demand is in the summer so if you have to take a power plant off line you do it in the winter. So there are a lot of utility assets under maintenance outages right now. One top of that reduced capacity, not all equipment is prepared for ice storms because it doesn't really happen here. Several gas pipelines in the state are having freezing issues causing the gas price to spike. ERCOT controls rates so if gas prices spike and utilities are forced to sell power for less than it costs to make, they would rather shut down and did until ERCOT stepped back in and let them charge real rates. People on variable rate power contracts are now basically screwed this month. And finally, the wind farms are not handling the ice well. Somee have frozen or iced up enough to be out of commission and the rest are operating at severely reduced capacity. So basically a varatiy of these went wrong and everything will be back to normal in a few days, but ERCOT has some work to do to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Just about every sentence in your comment is wrong:
> First, Texas has its own independent grid as a matter of physics.
Except that every state directly north of Texas is either on the East or West interconnects. ERCOT having its own grid is solely a matter of political desire.
> One top of that reduced capacity, not all equipment is prepared for ice storms because it doesn't really happen here.
Except a very similar event happened in 2011, and a specific set of recommendations were made by FERC to winterize power producers, and the recommendations were promptly ignored. Better discussion on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/ll2slh/texas_failed...
> And finally, the wind farms are not handling the ice well
Why do you say that? Texas has had its own grid basically forever. There are, and have been, some small connections to the other grids, but nothing that substantial.
To your first point, it's not about supply, it's about borrowing during periods of scarcity. There are plenty of wholesale markets that are "in the middle". Texas simply chose to not be apart of it.
