Nearly 70% of the 26 million Texas customers getting their power from ERCOT, the state government commission responsible for the state’s power grid, lost their power during last months winter storm, a new post-mortem report on the grid failure shows.
The audit by the University of Houston and reported by the Texas Tribune also found that half of ERCOT customers lost water during the crisis as the region’s temperatures plummeted. The average time time power was out: 42 hours.
Texas recently updated the number of fatalities due to the storm to 111 people dead, and that number may go up as more medical examiner reports get filed with the state. The storm caused more damage than the previously-worst storm, Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which cost $125 billion. Texas will receive an unspecified amount of federal relief, even though their state leadership regularly supports secession and their federal representation votes against storm aid for other states.