Simultaneously, almost an order of magnitude or almost 10 times as much of the thermal system - so coal, gas and nuclear - actually shut down because of the extreme cold, due to things like instruments freezing, et cetera. GRUBERT: So this is a very frustrating narrative, and largely because it is true that some of the solar and wind farms were producing less than you might have expected because of the extreme cold, but a lot of them were actually overperforming expectations as well. It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas, as well as other states, to make sure that we'll be able to heat our homes in the wintertime and cool our homes in the summertime. And that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power in a statewide basis. GREG ABBOTT: Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were, collectively, more than 10% of our power grid. So Texas' governor, Greg Abbott, went on Fox News last night, and he said renewable energy is actually partly to blame for this crisis.
KING: Regarding climate change, I want to disambiguate a part of this argument. But the overall point, that grids are facing more extreme conditions more often and further outside of the categories that they've expected is a huge one Whether that's a contributor here is something that I'm sure we'll hear a lot about in the coming years. I think this is one of the major problems that we're seeing across the United States, with a couple of examples over the last year, where particularly due to a lot of changes due to climate change and other big changes that we're seeing, grids are experiencing more extreme conditions than they're designed for. GRUBERT: So the kinds of extreme weather that Texas receives, they are more equipped to handle. But they're generally built to handle extreme weather that people expect. KING: Why aren't power grids built to handle extreme weather, given how important they are to people's day-to-day existence? But a lot of grids are susceptible to really, really major failures when they are this far outside of design conditions. I think the overall explanation that what happened is that demand really spiked both in the electricity and the natural gas systems at the same time as a lot of the generators were not able to operate because of those cold conditions and not being prepared for it is really what's going on. There are other places where grids get this cold and manage to pull through, but the main thing here is that the Texas grid is facing conditions that it was not designed for. It's cold across the entire state, and it's cold for a long time. GRUBERT: Yeah, so I think one of the most important things to understand about what's going on is that these are really extreme conditions for the Texas grid. What went wrong with the power grid in Texas? KING: You heard Joey Palacios offer a kind of layman's explanation, but I want to lean into your expertise. I want to bring in Emily Grubert, a professor at Georgia Tech whose expertise includes electrical networks.