It's confirmed: The blackouts in Texas are primarily because of frozen instruments at gas, coal and nuclear plants — as well limited supplies of gas, according to Ercot.
Frozen wind turbines were the least significant factor.https://t.co/10L8Br20iY pic.twitter.com/MBoWt7BDmu
— Catherine Traywick (@ctraywick) February 16, 2021
This is because many of those Texas natural gas plants are are poorly-regulated and don’t have to comply with the typical regs that they be able to operate below certain temps. Minnesota, which also relies on natural gas, does not have power outages when the temperature gets below freezing. (Hint: it’s well-regulated there.)