South Dakota, Kansas, and Iowa all get 20% or more of their energy.
All solid red states with frigid winters and zero blackouts.
True, but in a larger system operator allowing power to be wheeled not only within the ISO’s, but between them. While Texas is big, ERCOT doesn’t have the same geographic distribution or generation versus load or the same ability to import in times of supply disruption.
More important IMHO, is the degree of infrastructure hardening that was in place for outlier cold events. Facilities in the north central plains know they will get this kind of cold, regularly - no brainer to design and spend to make sure stuff works in the conditions.
In Texas - not going to happen as often, actually rarely. So the question is return on investment. Where viewed plant by plant, in ERCOT, maybe not, and their pricing structure didn’t create market signals to do so (such as capacity payments for confirmed weatherized generation assets).
Wind reductions were an issue - but a bigger issue was thermal plants not being able to some on line.
A fair response is that investment in winterizing reliable thermal generation was distorted by by renewable energy incentives distorting market pricing making such investment uneconomical. That is likely the underlying cause.
Green new deal, distorting economics, resulting in failure to invest in critical infrastructure.
Depends on how the contracts were structured.