Another Blast of Cold Air

Texans — me included  — have collective PTSD from Winter Storm Uri. Every time it gets cold, we get worried, and with good reason: the grid is not yet reliable enough, and another Uri almost certainly would cause rolling outages.

But the Arctic blast that will hit next week, while extreme, does not appear to be as severe as Winter Storm Uri. It’s very important to note that forecasts and conditions can change quickly, especially with climate change. But for now, this looks more like Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022 — which did not cause rolling outages — than Uri in 2021, which did.

Further, as I’ve written before, another Uri hitting now would almost certainly not produce outages of the magnitude and duration we saw in 2021. In the wake of Uri, the legislature and PUC passed the most basic grid reforms — like requiring the registration of critical natural gas infrastructure and weatherization of power plants. It’s not nearly enough, but coupled with market-driven increases in solar generation and energy storage, a Uri-like storm would probably be less destructive today…