[Menehune56]

I know this winter has been very cold but I don't recall electric power blackouts due to excessive demand in previous winters. And it's hard to believe there's more load on the power grid on a cold day, when a most folks heat with natural gas or propane, than on a hot summer day when everyone is running A/C. Something's not adding up.

I've read that the blackouts were due to wind power plants not producing much electrical power during the freeze. If this winter was a harbinger of a new little ice age, we'd better get cracking on new nuke plants pronto!

[SeeSac]

I know this winter has been very cold but I don't recall electric power blackouts due to excessive demand in previous winters. And it's hard to believe there's more load on the power grid on a cold day, when a most folks heat with natural gas or propane, than on a hot summer day when everyone is running A/C. Something's not adding up.

1. Some plants were not properly winterized leading to shutdowns.
2. More plants have maintenance outages in the winter.
3. NG plants did not get their supplies due to diverting to higher usage residential customers trying to keep their houses warm.
Reduced electrical output meant less power to NG pumping reducing NG supplies.

[thackney]

Recent Blackouts in Texas were caused by multiple plants knocked offline due to the cold, combined with multiple plants down for scheduled maintenance, due to the typically low peak demand.

But a heck of a lot of space heaters get pulled out and plugged in when a place like Houston gets to the mid 20’s.