{"id":160287,"date":"2026-02-11T18:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/160287\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T18:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:11:08","slug":"hows-texas-energy-grid-5-years-after-winter-storm-uri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/160287\/","title":{"rendered":"How’s Texas’ energy grid 5 years after Winter Storm Uri?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds died when Winter Storm Uri took out the lights across the Lone Star State five years ago this week. After billions in losses<\/a>, the storm spurred big investments in energy infrastructure. <\/p>\n

When Winter Storm Uri hit five years ago<\/a>, Ed Hirs, an energy fellow with the University of Houston, was at his apartment.<\/p>\n

\u201c[I] lost power for more than 24 hours straight, and then for the next four days. You know, average, maybe four hours of electricity per day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Millions of Texans had cranked up the heat, spiking demand. At the same time, \u201cwe lost about half of our power plants during that time,\u201d said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist with UT Austin. \u201cAnd no grid is resilient to losing half of its generation capacity.\u201d <\/p>\n

The cold knocked off power that was being produced by natural gas<\/a>, coal<\/a> and nuclear plants, and wind turbines<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Now, a lot of that infrastructure has been winterized. And \u201cwe have a lot more things like energy storage<\/a>,\u201d Rhodes said. \u201cWe have a lot more solar, a lot of resources that don’t rely on a fuel supply chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are still questions about whether companies who produce and deliver natural gas have sufficiently weatherized their infrastructure, he said.<\/p>\n

And Ed Hirs said that the structure of Texas\u2019 unique market means there\u2019s less incentive to build up a cushion of extra electricity. \u201cIt doesn’t pay to add capacity, doesn’t pay to add reliability.\u201d <\/p>\n

But, he added, that cushion can save lives when extreme weather hits.<\/p>\n

More on Texas\u2019 energy gridRelated Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds died when Winter Storm Uri took out the lights across the Lone Star State five years ago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,25660,18864,21822,16614,27,36858],"class_list":{"0":"post-160287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-energy-grid","12":"tag-energy-infrastructure","13":"tag-power-generation","14":"tag-power-plants","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-winter-storm-uri"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}