When Puerto Rico was without power we saw companies like Duke-Energy rush to send all kinds of help to restore power. Now they just laugh at Texas for not being prepared for this beyond design basis cold weather event as if anyone could have imagined it would freeze in Houston causing one reactor unit at STP to shut down. The other laughing matter was that the Texas grid was not regulated by FERC which would have allowed power from the rest of the nation to restore the grid voltage. I listened to a lecture about how we shouldn't blame the windmills in Texas for the power outage but that the blame goes towards the state of Texas for not having adequate back up power. Well duh. So what they are saying is that Texas had inadequate fossil power. Truth. The pipeline wasn't big enough to handle that many gas plants coming on all at once. Well duh. Moreover, one nuclear plant went down for lack of freeze protection. Who knew it would freeze in Houston? Nobody wants to blame the fact that the grid in Texas was overly reliant on wind energy that failed to deliver on demand when the cold set in and in what possible way could the grid in Texas be hooked up to the national grid if they were operating 20 percent intermittent wind power?
