It is, at least most of the state. I knew that, but just read up on it all more last week. It's been that way pretty much ever since electric grids were created to avoid federal regulations, as it's not interstate commerce. I'm sure the feds would love to get it more intertwined, as if I understand correctly Texas actually has more connections with Mexico's grid than the rest of the US and most of the time is a net seller of electricity.

I suppose there could be some ulterior motive, but I can't think of what they would have done to cause this. It's just massive demand in the wrong season added to the fact that the windmills got frozen up. I think it's common to do plant maintenance in the winter (usually the off-season) as well and take down generators for a month. I've heard unconfirmed rumors that coal deliveries were held up (those would likely come from out of state), but I toured a coal plant when I was in college and at least back then they kept a pretty large amount of reserves on site. If a coal plant goes offline, it's usually weeks to get it going again.

Maybe the plant closings could have been, but I was looking that up an hour or so ago and it sounds like they had just become less financially viable with the windmills being decent on top of natural gas being easier than coal to operate and plentiful here. Texas is thought of as the oil state since that's the cash crop and all, but there is tons of natural gas here too.

It's one of those things had it just happened to part of the state or whatever then the rest picks up the slack, but when you cover the entire state in 35 degrees below normal temps and snow, it's a mess.

Maybe Biden colluded with Trudeau to send Canada's cold weather down here? Impeach!