We don’t actually know the whole picture yet. I’ve read through about half of the 350-page report on the 2011 event. Without a similar investigation, it’s reasonable to think that the same kinds of things happened this time.
Generators failed for many reasons. One was lack of fuel (e.g. gas), but that wan’t the major cause. Mostly it was directly or indirectly caused by the weather.
Similarly, production of gas was down for several reasons. One was rolling blackouts. Apparently ERCOT delegates a certain amount of load to shed to the next lower level. At least in 2011, neither ERCOT nor those levels always knows what parts of their system supply gas generation. At any rate, that was only one of three major problems. Suprisingly (at least to me) anther major one was icy roads. There are things that have to be done on site regularly. If staff can’t get to a gas well, it may shut down automatically.
Obviously I don’t have full information on this year’s event. But I would suggest to you that either does Jason Isaacs. What he described surely happened. It happened in 2011. But jumping to it as the major cause is just as suspicious as jumping on frozen windmills.
The mainstream press has described the problem as failure to learn the lessons of the 2011 event. We won’t know for sure for some time, but I’d be willing to wager that they are right. I’d also be willing to bet that most of the failures could reasonably be classified as failure to winterize, almost by definition, since winterizing means taking the precautions needed to prevent failures due to low temperatures. That would include, in my view, separating out power to gas wells so that they don’t get caught in blackouts, just as other critical customers are protected. That was one of the recommendations of the report on the 2011 event.
