Technology

No that was the bullshit ercot put out to cover for the fact that fossil fuel production dropped by half or more. Source:

But the majority of the power losses were from gas plants, including 25 gigawatts of capacity that went offline. Coal and nuclear outages cut another 4.5 gigawatts and 1.3 gigawatts respectively, according to the University of Texas at Austin report. Considering that peak demand was about 70 gigawatts, losing about 30 gigawatts from gas, coal and nuclear was a disaster.

Wind energy also performed poorly, starting with ice accumulation that led to some wind farms needing to shut down early in the crisis. Wind power outages peaked at about 9 gigawatts, a number that takes into account wind levels on those days, according to the UT Austin repor

“It’s not like wind is blameless, but (the power crisis) wasn’t caused by wind failure,” said Webber. To say otherwise is “at best misleading, at worst an outright lie.”

Natural gas and coal totals 70% of their total generation, and wind was 20%, so losing half of both means fossil fuels was much more impactful.