Some legislative changes likely helped protect the grid during the January cold snap and other changes were inconsequential. Luck also played a role.
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About 50,000 Texans lost power during last month’s winter storm — a far cry from the 4.5 million during 2021’s winter storm. The most recent outages also remained confined to specific geographic areas. This wasn’t the case in 2021, when residents from the Panhandle to the Rio Grande Valley suddenly found themselves shivering in the dark.
Bottom line? After years of reforms, the Texas power grid last month has withstood a cold weather stress test. What’s to explain this apparent success? We take a look at where the state was then, where it is now, and what comes next.
Then and Now
Although generation technologies of various sorts failed during Winter Storm Uri in 2021, losses among natural gas-fired plants were particularly severe. To avoid uncontrollable statewide blackouts during the crisis, ERCOT ordered 20,000 megawatts of electric demand offline — a move that federal regulators characterized as the largest controlled outage in U.S. history. More Texans also lost power because of downed transmission and distribution lines.
Texas eventually thawed out, but not before suffering $80 to $130 billion in economic damages and more than 200 deaths. The subsequent political fallout was both swift and brutal. All three Public Utility Commissioners were pushed from their posts as was ERCOT’s executive director. Five members of the ERCOT board, including its chair, resigned. Lawmakers excoriated many of these humiliated officials during blistering public hearings.
During the regular session of 2021 and then again in 2023 the Texas Legislature adopted new laws intended to guard against future cold weather disasters. Among other things, these laws required regulators to map critical energy infrastructure statewide, required natural gas operators to weatherize critical equipment, and funded a new $10 billion program to subsidize thermal generation construction. The legislature also ordered changes to the PUC and ERCOT, and both organizations likewise pursued market changes under their own authority.
Some of these changes likely helped protect the grid during the January cold snap — for instance, the weatherization requirements. Other changes were inconsequential. This includes the creation of the $10 billion Texas Energy Fund because plants subsidized by it have yet to enter service. As noted below, some experts also say some blind luck was a factor.
What the Experts are Saying
- We Got Lucky. Among those noting that ERCOT got off relatively easy with this latest cold snap is analyst Ed Hirs, an energy economics lecturer at the University of Houston. Speaking to Inside Climate News, Hirs said: “What saved us was luck.” Hirs noted that gas infrastructure vital to the grid’s operations continues to age, and so what saved Texas last month wasn’t necessarily any of the recent reform efforts but the fact that this year’s storm was much less severe than that of 2021.
- Weatherization. Houston-based energy transmission and distribution analyst Michael Preddy said legislatively mandated weatherization requirements and ERCOT’s winter storm planning studies helped prepare power generators and utilities for freezing temperatures. “We were not expecting the issues that we saw in ‘21 because of all these measures that have been put in place,” Preddy told Inside Climate News. Before 2021, many of the gas system weatherization requirements that the Railroad Commission now enforces were voluntary. However, Texas does not require public disclosure of which gas facilities have been weatherized or how they performed in extreme weather — so doubts remain.
- Batteries Helped. Battery storage has more than tripled on the ERCOT system since 2023 — and it shows. Utility scale battery storage briefly provided 9.5 percent of grid power during last month’s cold snap. That equated to more than 7,000 megawatts of electricity — or enough for 1.75 million homes.
- New Rules. Both the PUCT and ERCOT have made changes to emergency response and market pricing rules, according to PUC chairman Thomas Gleeson. These changes can help ERCOT bring backup power online when grid conditions become tight. In addition, ERCOT received emergency authority to order data centers operations offline — if necessary — to keep power flowing during January’s storm. Gleeson also noted that many facilities have fuel on site, thanks to new rules enforced by the PUC. As of this writing, however, it remains unclear whether it became necessary for any units to deploy onsite fuel during January’s storm, or whether ERCOT exercised its authority to shutdown data centers.
What’s next?
The state’s power grid still faces big challenges. Largely driven by the explosive growth of AI data centers, crypto-mining operations and the petroleum industry, peak demand is expected to reach 145 gigawatts in 2031 — a more than 66 percent increase from the 87 gigawatts in 2025.
But solar power and battery storage have grown to historic levels in Texas and will help meet that future need. Another 5.4 gigawatts of generation also remain in production through Texas Energy Fund grants and loans, with more TEF-funded plants waiting in line. However, these new Texas Energy Fund generation units won’t come close to matching expected demand and some also question whether the multi-billion-dollar subsidy program itself — paradoxically — might undermine separate market-based generation incentives.
But either way, what’s clear is that continued infrastructure expansion won’t happen free of charge. Whether through tax dollars or utility bills, Texans ultimately will foot the bill. The Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute has estimated that residential electricity rates could rise by about 29 percent by 2030.