Texas Article 4

Windmills Are Blamed for Texas Blackouts

February 15, 2021

Nearly half of the wind-power capacity of Texas was knocked out by ice storms on Sunday (February 14th).
Millions of people lost power, and dozens died. Texans want to know: who was to blame?

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the organization that controls the electricity grid in Texas,
said that some windmills seized up from the cold.

Texas Governor Greg Abbot asked President Joe Biden to declare an emergency. This federal move authorized
U.S. agencies to coordinate disaster relief across the state.

The crisis was due to extremely cold temperatures. These temperatures, combined with snow, sleet, and
freezing rain, slammed much of the country, from the Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and Washington
throughout the Great Plains and through to the mid-Atlantic states of Georgia and the Carolinas.

An Arctic air mass pushed southward to parts of the country that are not used to cold winters. The National
Weather Service reported that winter storm warnings were posted for much of the Gulf Coast, including Texas
and Louisiana, as well as Oklahoma and Missouri.

ERCOT issued an alert pleading with Texas consumers and businesses to use less electricity wherever
possible, because the energy demand was so high. “We are dealing with higher-than-normal generation
outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units,” the agency
said.

Wind farms in West Texas were particularly hard-hit by the ice storms. According to ERCOT, wind generation
accounted for 23% of Texas electricity generation in 2021. This is the second-largest energy source behind
natural gas, which represented 45%.

References: Adapted from Gorman, S. (2021, February 14). Icy weather chills Texas wind energy as deep
freeze grips much of U.S. Reuters. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather/icy-weather-chills-texas-wind-energy-
as-deep-freeze-grips-much-of-u-s-idUSKBN2AF066

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