I could be wrong here, but it seems Texas should have the same problem in extreme heat conditions if this was truly about the power grid.
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Texan here:
Most of us do not have natural gas heating. Our winters are usually mild and short with a few cold snaps mixed in and normally some warm reprieves as well. This winter has been much colder than usual. My water heater runs on gas, but everything else in my house is electric.
From my understanding our reliance on wind turbines was only part of the problem. Apparently, many power companies were told to winterize a bunch of stuff about a decade ago after there were some issues. They apparently didn't do it. This caused major issues as a lot of natural gaslines were busting and it affected power plants, too. So not only was our energy production cut down, but a lack of winterization caused even more power issues.
ERCOT was also a big thing which someone below explained that whole disaster better than I could.
So there really isn't just one thing to blame. I also found it odd that I personally know people that never lost power, and other people who didn't have power for days. We were lucky and just had to deal with rolling blackouts, so we had power about half the time. (45mins on/45minutes off). The whole way they did it was just a huge mess.
How does a gas line burst from cold weather? Is it the shrinkage of metal pipes?
I have no idea. All I know is that they were told to winterize a bunch of stuff and they didn't do it which was a contributing factor to all of this. I'm guessing it's similar to why water pipes bust??? I'm not familiar with cold weather problems like this. All I know is that a bunch of people completely screwed this whole situation up. Ridiculous. I hope heads roll for this.
I'm just glad I follow Q and had a feeling some crap was going to go down, so I stocked up last month on bottled water and some canned/dried goods, and my husband insisted on buying a small generator. It wasn't big enough to run my whole house or anything, but I knew we could plug a heater into it or cook some food with it. I felt so much better knowing we were prepared. This has lit a fire under me to be even more prepared in the future.