A panel of judges has said that big power companies cannot be held liable for failure to provide electricity during the 2021 blackout. The reason is Texas’ deregulated energy market.
Fwiw (I live in Illinois) over the years our system was updated with materials and redundancies to counter loss of service during storms. There’s been a number of times over the last few years that a bad storm hits and does damage that previously would have created a loss of power, but you can watch the power flicker for a few seconds while the system tests alternate routes that are able to continue to provide service to the most residents. There was a time that power outages were expected a few times a year during bad storms, but I can’t recall the last time we had a weather related outage of more than a few minutes.
Obviously local to the damage there nothing to do but wait for the infrastructure to be repaired, but that happens far faster when there’s redundancies supplying the majority and fewer repairs that need to be addressed.
Fwiw (I live in Illinois) over the years our system was updated with materials and redundancies to counter loss of service during storms. There’s been a number of times over the last few years that a bad storm hits and does damage that previously would have created a loss of power, but you can watch the power flicker for a few seconds while the system tests alternate routes that are able to continue to provide service to the most residents. There was a time that power outages were expected a few times a year during bad storms, but I can’t recall the last time we had a weather related outage of more than a few minutes.
Obviously local to the damage there nothing to do but wait for the infrastructure to be repaired, but that happens far faster when there’s redundancies supplying the majority and fewer repairs that need to be addressed.