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The fundamental root of the issue here is that the power grid as it currently exists in Texas is poorly designed and constituted with inadequate “reserve margin” built in.

As the excellent linked article states (and this is in line with things I have read about our power grids in the USA over the years) the Texas power grid had an overdependence on wind turbines built with no forethought towards maintaining a reserve margin.

When wind turbines (or other energy sources vulnerable to availability issues) are implemented ONLY by themselves (WITHOUT thought out, “baked in” buffer sources such as battery banks or reserve sources of energy generators which can be brought online) those systems will have a grave built in flaw: they add to the variability in power grid.

Think of a power grid as something that must be constantly tuned, like an airplane in flight. On a well designed plane, you can trim it so that in calm conditions you can take your hands off the controls, and the aircraft will be perfectly stable, and you could theoretically just cruise along.

That does not describe a power grid. People think you design it, turn it on, and just...go. A power grid is in a constant state of flux, things coming online, things going offline, peak demands...temperatures going up and down with electric heating and air conditioning going on and off, standard equipment failures, and...

...bad weather.

As the article accurately states, you can’t go hands off. As an energy provider, you have to forecast, predict, watch, and react to changes. You have to plan in advance and watch and tweak constantly, bringing this online or offline. Basically, to keep it level. Getting it out of balance is asking for trouble.

So...when you have a larger than normal dependence on a power generating source that is subject to the vagaries of ANYTHING, never mind...the weather...you better have a solid plan for managing the ups-and-downs of the grid and keeping that buffer intact and planned for.

You have to maintain your “Reserve Margin”. The reserve margin is important, because it keeps things level, and buys time for reasoned and rational human intervention and resource deployment. If you have a good reserve margin, people don’t have to panic and begin making choices under pressure, which is never good. People can use their brains and fix things.

If you don’t have a solid plan for and resources assigned to maintain that “reserve margin”, then people are going to have to watch closely and act fast and accurately to maintain a level grid. People panic. Their thought processes get clouded, they forget things, and...they do things not in the plan or simply wrong. They improvise. And all of that is bad.

For comparison in these things, I always use aviation as a standard, because in aviation, deviation from plan and dependence on human training, reaction, and accuracy, is fraught with error. In aviation, there are, of course equipment failures and malfunctions, and when those happen, you have to depend on good planning, human training, reaction times, and accuracy in responses to those failures. I use aviation, because when you get a flat tire in a car, you pull off the road. In a ship, you usually have more time to think it through, generally, you aren’t going to sink right away unless you have a broken seal or a holed hull. If your engine fails you can work on it unless you are in a gale, that kind of thing. But in an aircraft, if anything breaks, the invisible clock starts, your altitude begins to work against you, and your fuel levels are ALWAYS going down. So, in aviation (and nuclear power generation) human response to failures is critical to keep the situation level.

In this Texas event, a lot of things came together in a Perfect Storm.

Extremely unusual weather.

Poor implementation and planning of the grid.

Human error.

Unplanned failures.

All of these things ate away at the “reserve margin” required to keep the grid level, to keep it from going too high and damaging equipment (a design “feature” generally) or going too low, and making the process of getting back to “level flight” impossible.

In this event, this weather anomaly is not completely unheard of, but is pretty rare overall for Texas. Electric use probably skyrocketed, people were turning their electric heat all the way up, etc. That ate at the “reserve margin”.

They were not set up to meet this challenge due to the poor implementation of their grid. It was politically designed, and profit designed. Politically designed because most politicians have “green” ANYTHING in their quiver to use in elections and such. Some actually believe in it. So, there were political goals and mandates leading to poor design. Politics never contribute to a better design of anything. And profit is a great motive, in an area where profits provide the incentive and are subject to the rules imposed by a market. In the case of wind and solar, that profit motive is removed from the overall framework that inhibits it and forces it to do things more or less correctly. In the case of renewable, heavily subsidized energy, they spent all their money on subsidized products that were inherently vulnerable to the forces of inconsistency, and very little on the infrastructure that might have contributed to a “reserve margin” that would defend to a degree against those vulnerabilities. Things like battery banks, reserve sources kept offline except when needed, etc. And, they also apparently didn’t have winterized turbines as they might in northern states. Heck, they could buy more of them if they didn’t have to winterize them, right?

Human error became a big factor. When they lost their reserve margin, they made errors as humans are prone to do when under stress due to time duress. The humans involved likely began to improvise and try things not in the documented procedures to keep the grid level and above a level where automated things begin to kick in out of their control, and as a result, they very likely made things worse and hastened those very things they were desperately trying to avoid.

And of course, the unplanned errors. Valves freezing and failing, bringing down both gas and nuclear sources, apparently. After that, the “Reserve Margin” was a distant memory at that point.

When all these things happened, they were behind the ball (as they say in carrier aviation) and have still not caught up. Makes no difference if it is the meatball on a carrier landing system or an Eight-Ball on a pool table. Once you get behind it, getting out is never easy.

Which is how that works when you get behind the ball.