The power went out for millions of Texans during a massive storm in February 2021. Hundreds of people died. How could something like this happen in the energy capital of the U.S.? Hosted by KUT’s Mose Buchele, “The Disconnect” looks at more than a century of events that led up to the blackout and what happens now.
“Even here in the newsroom, while we were talking among the staff, all of these different questions came up,” Buchele said. “So basically, we want to give people a better understanding of why the Texas grid is the way it is. Give them some idea of what could be done differently so that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.”
Highlights from this segment:
– The podcast attempts to find out whether the design of the Texas electric grid made the February blackouts inevitable.
– Deregulation in the lat 1990s changed the relationship between electricity providers, government and consumers.
– ERCOT’s job is not to guaranteed that consumers have power, but to protect the electric grid.
