In a nutshell... Our grid here is managed by ERCOT, they are actually a private entity who manages the electrical grid for Texas. ERCOT has to follow Federal EPA guidelines however, so whatever Texas wants them to do is run through those filters.

Texas saw that the wind turbines were going to go off line, they cannot operate in icy weather, high wind or low wind conditions as we knew were coming. So since 'somehow' chinese wind turbines were allowed to become some 25% of our grid capacity we knew 25% of our energy was fixing to disappear. So the Governor signed off on ramping production via idle gas plants and also running already operating plants at higher loadings, all that causes emissions which technically exceed permitted levels.

So the Feds refused to allow us to run at those levels, even tho we explained it was life or death and had agreed to pay whatever fines they wished us to pay....

Ok, when the wind farms dropped off we had to start some rolling blackouts, but with so much capacity off line and a ceiling on what we were allowed to produce in emergency, we saw other plants dropping off because of a domino effect whereby a broken water pump here or a busted gas line there caused other facilities to fail, so we had to stop the rolling part and just hold on. In 'some' cases facilities where cities had political control of maintenance funds proper maintenances were not done, winterizing not done because corrupt sanctuary city governments did not maintain water lines and gas lines, led to supply shortages.

Bottom line is two main culprits; the Feds refused our request to bring power online and the wind turbine failures.

NEVER allow wind to be a component of your power grid.

There are other factors but mainly those two were enough. I've run power plants, gas plants, during hurricanes, we'd run ropes as safety lines and you live there for a week or two until it passes as needed, or until the winds tore you up and you had to shut down. We staffed with two crews and ate and slept there, sometimes several times a year.

Winter storms never bothered us, but it has only been recently that wind turbines were allowed to become a big part of the grid. We simply don't have enough gas, coal and nuke power these days, too much wind , solar and unicorn pharts.

I do daresay, if POTUS were still sitting at the desk in the Oval Office Texas would have ramped up power production and we would not have had this mess.

Fun fact, jet aircraft pollute a thousand times more than power plants, but they are allowed to operate, why? One flight in John Kerry's private jet does more damage than any 25 power plants operating all year...

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