What Really Happened During the Texas Power Grid Outage?

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Too many "once in a lifetime" disasters have happened in my lifetime

the whole "four minutes from total system collapse" aspect of the situation is unreal to me

The power outage hit at the exact same moment that I went into the hospital in critical condition. My wife was left at home to care for our four parrots. The severe cold would have killed the parrots but for one thing. The previous October we had a whole house backup power system installed. It ran on natural gas and that source did not fail. My wife had power during the whole episode. I survived the hospital trip and went on to be proclaimed as a seer and mechanical genius because it was my idea to get the generator installed. We've had more than our share of luck.

My dad worked at the WA parish generation station in Thompson for over 40 years. When he did Black Start training in event of a total blackout on the Texas grid, he was one of the few who passed it in 2015 and for years said that when he was gone, something was going to come test our infrastructure and the personnel related to it. The December before this happened, he passed away. Sure enough, two months after, what he said was going to happen happened. All in all, he'd be impressed with how accurate you are with this entire video. Wonderfully done!

I work in Transmission, Write Emergency Operations Plans, and Blackstart Recovery Plans. I just wanted to say your information is absolutely correct and extremely accurate for someone who doesn't work in the industry. I will openly say there is no word that worries us more than Blackstart, followed closely by Firm Load Shed. The events in Texas pushed the grid operators to the absolute limit. It essentially came down to seconds for them to make decisions and a wrong or delayed call could have been even more catastrophic. I guess it was a good thing everyone had their coffee that day. Ps I just wanted to say you missed one part towards the middle. Not only does power meet demand precisely, but in North America it is regulated that Generators (not all but some) are paid to be "Dispatchable Contingency Reserve" or spinning reserve, usually this is 5% or so of typical region load. Essentially it is magnetically synchronized with the grid but has no power (steam, fuel or water) applied to it and it is used as a buffer to handle quick or small spikes in demand using Automatic Generation Frequency Control (AGFC) where the computers automatically monitor frequency and increase or decrease power to help stabilize frequency. An Energy Emergency is declared when the spinning reserve has been fully utilized. Additionally Hydro (or even pumped hydro) is often the power source of choice for spinning reserve because of all the power sources it has the fastest spin up time and can respond to changes almost instantaneously. Just figured I would share that for fun. Heck a whole video could be made on that.

He’s talking about a “current event”. Not sure if the pun was intended, but I chuckled.

My family got incredibly lucky because 1: We are new yorkers, so we were used to the cold. 2: We are Dominicans, so we are used to blackouts. The funny thing is, I was trying to convince my family to invest in a generator not even a month before the black out and i was ignored.

Texas power plant engineer here. Video is absolutely spot-on as to how this happened. As explained, it is difficult to fully comprehend this event without a technical knowledge of the grid, as well as the market forces that brought us to this point. An excellent and important video.

As a retired engineer who worked in the instrumentation industry for utilities and customers I can say that your presentation was excellent. I could probably show this to my wife and for the first time she’d understand what I did for 35 years 😎

So many people are saying this guy needs to be on tv, let me just stop you right there He's completely sane and in touch with reality, he's using facts not opinions, basic science and not making it political. So we can't have him on tv

I remember this week from up in Iowa. I formally worked in a chemical manufacturing facility, and that week, we ended up slowing down production. We had to ration natural gas, mainly for price, but we also heard rumors of the pipes freezing, although no one believed it at the time. Also, it was shocking to see the issues it caused for oil refineries, winterizing and heat tracing is such a forgotten luxury in storms like that.

Thank you, my brother lives in Texas, and his explanation of the power outage seemed to be less "scientific" and more hyperbolic. Your presentation was impartial, balanced, and brought us behind the scenes to understand what really happened. Bravo.

For someone from the Northeast US I only saw brief glimpses of what Texans were going through and of course the politicians bashing the situation. This was an excellent overview of what happened, it is so much more informative than anything else I've seen (or read).

Grady, I'm a civil engineer (retired) and have found your channel. You are amazing in how you can so adeptly summarize complicated processes. My hat is off to you. I'm a big fan and I would have loved to have you as one of my professors back in the 70s.

This guy is a pro in every sense of the word, a natural in front of the camera, perfect editing, and able to give clear & concise explanations while also utilizing poignant graphics to move technical points across to non-pros. Amazing! This man may be one of the very best talents on YouTube, and that's why I subscribed. I learn so many fascinating and useful things from his videos. Bravo, sir, bravo!

Great video. Load shedding is almost a daily occurrence over here in south africa. Has been for the last 10... maybe 15 years. Power grids are so hugely complex that once a country (like us), or state or whatever starts to lose control or falls behind on maintenance, it becomes exponentially more and more difficult to catch up and recover again.

I was a Power Plant Control Room Operator for almost 34 years, you did a Great Job explaining this crisis in Texas to your Listeners!!!

Excellent video. I'd love seeing more of its kind when appropriate.

You have done an incredible job of accurately explaining what happened with out putting slant or bias into the information! I find your videos to be the most reliable source of information on these topics! Which is so rare these days. Thank you for all you do!