[mschaef]

Natural gas plant outages were around 30,000mw, and there were issues with both coal and nuclear plants going offline also. Wind was only a few thousand MW below planned values.

Not close to being entirely a wind power issue. (Even though wind power could clearly have done better, as it did in Iowa, where it was significantly colder and the wind turbines stayed online.)

[chrisco255]

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/14/historic-win...

Over half the turbines were completely frozen. Wind typically accounts for ~22% of Texas power supply. Meanwhile, there was a record high spike (nearly double normal loads) in demand for electricity. If not for natural gas, the blackouts would have been even worse, because at least they were able to be ramped up and provide some power via rolling blackouts.

[mschaef]

> If not for natural gas, the blackouts would have been even worse, because at least they were able to be ramped up

Natural Gas, Coal, and Nuclear accounted for over 80% of the lost generation. Most of that was gas.

See page 16 here: https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2021/04/28/ERCOT_Winter_Sto...

Same thing happened in both 2011 and 1989… NatGas was not there when the state needed it most.

[bradknowles]

The wind turbines need to be winterized, too.

They didn’t do as well as they should have, but they did a lot better than expected.

[mschaef]

I recently heard a podcast with the CEO of MidAmerican (based in Iowa). They had materially colder temperatures than TX and operated 91% of their wind capacity. There's nothing inherent in wind that keeps it from operating in cold weather.

(MidAmerican did pay extra for winterization, so you can maybe make the argument that it wasn't worth it for TX to have done the same, given the risk profile.)