"WHO GETS THE JOB OF PUSHING THE KNOB?":

[W]hile demand on the grid during the time was unprecedented, the temperatures that warranted it were not. Texas was unprepared for a weather event that regulators had seen coming for around a decade. Weatherization, strategic crisis communication, and regional transmission connections communication could have mitigated some of Uri's worst effects, according to 10 energy experts and co-authors of a new retrospective report on the causes of the Texas grid failure, published this month in Energy Research and Social Science.

"The causes were sort of this unfortunate perfect storm," said Kyri Baker, a coauthor of the study and assistant professor in civil, environmental and architectural engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Some of it was poor forecasting, some of it was not winterizing, even though a similar event happened in 2011 .... a lot of it could have been prevented." 

Every energy source powering Texas' grid, with the exception of solar power, underperformed compared to the capacity ERCOT expected it to be able to handle, the report notes.

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