Maths could’ve saved Texas’s power grid in 2021
O KEEP THE STATE’S GRID RUNNING, operators at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) must supply up to 75 000 megawatts of power to meet demand. But a cascade of events on 14 February 2021 – rare plummeting temperatures, up to 28 cm of snowfall, thousands of people turning up their thermostats simultaneously, and power plants spontaneously going offline – meant an extended loss of power for millions of people.
