What the whole fiasco did for me was realizing I can’t rely on power from companies whose alleged purpose is to provide power.
I was lucky enough to have a gas stove, and this is how I didn’t freeze to death. I mean, when you have a shitton of snow and ice outside, boiling that is a simple matter. It was a moist but survivable time.
Still, Snowpacolypse was a direct contributor to my decision to live off solar. When faced with a power shortage, two options are available: reduce use and increase supply. And paired, it becomes rather doable under standard Texas conditions to live off of 2kWh a day. I have a diesel heater for when things drop under 40F (5C), but otherwise, it’s blankets of increasing heat retention.
I’d imagine people who didn’t experience what we did because of, say, reasonable infrastructure investments think this is overkill, but it only takes once to realize modern life requires a lot of moving parts, and when one gets fucked, you really want a backup plan. What ERCOT did, to my mind, was accelerate any nascent push toward self-sufficiency, which is actively against the power industry’s interests.
I look at this news as “meh.” When the options are sue or plan for the future to avoid such a situation going forward, suing seems like weak sauce. Yeah, corporations don’t care about us, and yeah, it’s Texas. What the fuck did anyone expect out of this gambit?