Texas had a tough winter in 2021.In mid-February, with temperatures dropping to the one digits, demand for electrical energy hit a file excessive a
Texas had a tough winter in 2021.
In mid-February, with temperatures dropping to the one digits, demand for electrical energy hit a file excessive all through Texas. Provide ran brief, inflicting the state’s electrical grid operator to implement rolling energy outages. On the top of the disaster, greater than 4.5 million prospects misplaced energy. The freak winter storm brought about neighboring states comparable to Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas to additionally impose rolling blackouts.
Texas residents shivered within the chilly, as outages lasted for days at a time. They misplaced entry to water. Some resorted to turning on their automobiles of their garages to maintain heat then died resulting from carbon monoxide poisoning.
The historic breakdown was a wake-up name — if the facility grid in Texas was so fragile, what about the remainder of the US? The U.S. has confronted a 67% enhance in weather-related energy outages since 2000, in response to information from Local weather Central. A part of the issue is an growing old infrastructure. Most of in the present day’s energy grid was constructed within the 1950s and ’60s, with the hopes that it could final for 50 years.
Watch the video above to seek out out what occurred in Texas’ energy outage and the way it’s a warning signal for the U.S. energy grid.