2021 Texas power crisis

Uncommon card · No. 114991

In February 2021, the state of Texas suffered a major power crisis, which came about during three severe winter storms sweeping across the United States on February 10–11, 13–17 (known as Winter Storm Uri), and 15–20. The storms triggered the worst energy infrastructure failure in Texas state history, leading to shortages of water, food, and heat. More than 4.5 million homes and businesses were left without power, some for several days. At least 246 people were killed directly or indirectly, with some estimates as high as 702 killed as a result of the crisis. State officials, including Republican governor Greg Abbott, initially incorrectly blamed the outages on frozen wind turbines and solar panels. Data showed that failure to winterize traditional power sources, principally natural gas infrastructure but also, to a lesser extent, wind turbines, had caused the grid failure, with a drop in power production from natural gas more than five times greater than that from wind turbines. Texas...

Read on Wikipedia · Image NASA https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147941/extreme-winter-weather-causes-us-blackouts, Public domain