It would be a relief if the critics who blamed frozen wind turbines for last week’s crippling Texas power outage were correct. If they had been, it would be easy to understand why people in the second most populous US state had to sleep in their cars and burn belongings to stay warm after icy winter weather sent temperatures plunging to -18C. Unfortunately, early indications suggest the reasons are far more complicated.
It is true that the oil-rich state is a wind colossus. Though heavily reliant on natural gas, Texas leads the US in wind power generation and as far back as 2017 it had enough installed wind capacity to make it the world’s sixth biggest wind power if it were a country.
As a result, wind farms sometimes supply a large amount of Texans’ electricity, usually in the windier spring season. Last May, wind contributed a record 59 per cent of hourly power demand. But it is a different story in winter, when less wind is expected and planned for at peak times of need.