The guy I know who has worked in the Texas energy sector most of his life built a new house a few years ago. He made sure to design and build his own power generation system, so that should tell you pretty much all you need to know about his faith in the Texas energy grid. He probably already got his money's worth during the winter storm, in the form of preventing property damage.

He told me yesterday that during widespread heatwaves, like recently, there's no pressure differential out in west Texas driving the wind and windmills, and one of the major natural gas generating plants has been down for maintenance and repairs. Since large-scale, long term weather trends are usually easily predictable about a week in advance, it seems like someone has dropped the ball repeatedly this year on coordinating when major fossil fuel burners should be allowed to drop offline. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Texas has explicitly regulated against the state being able to tell energy companies when they can and can't produce.

Meanwhile:

This week, not only does the city throttle our Nest thermostat every afternoon (we can more than afford to curb our usage for the greater good, no biggie), but Greg Fuckwit is allocating as much money as possible to build a wall. I guess it'll be built alongside Trump's totally complete, beautiful wall?

My A/C went out for a couple days in mid-July last summer. If we have rolling or total blackouts, for sure, expect a repeat of this.