Texas utility regulators on Thursday approved a rule requiring power companies to better prepare for winter weather — based on recommendations that were made, but never acted upon, a decade ago by experts and federal regulators after a 2011 storm caused widespread rolling power outages.
The rule also requires power plants to fix “acute” issues from the February 2021 winter storm, which left millions of Texans without electricity, heat and clean water for several days when power plants failed to operate during an extended blast of arctic air.
The February power outages, which caused the deaths of as many as 700 people, according to a BuzzFeed analysis, were primarily caused by the inability of power plants to operate in the extreme cold. It was the same problem that Texas faced during the 2011 winter storm.
