The storm is taking a heavy toll on electric service in Texas. An estimated 2.6 million homes and businesses in the state had their power interrupted Sunday night and Monday morning because of storm damage or in rotating outages ordered by regulators. Part of the problem arose when wind turbines in West Texas became frozen. Roughly half of the state’s wind generating capacity was knocked offline, shutting off as much as 10,500 megawatts of wind power, a significant chunk of the state’s total electricity supply. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s power grid, said in a statement that the rotating outages were a “last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole.”

Source: New York Times February 15, 2021 18:11 UTC