Part 1: The Evolution of the Texas Grid since Winter Storm Uri in 2021
As the five-year anniversary of Winter Storm Uri approaches, this analysis by Dr. Brent Bennett examines whether the ERCOT grid is truly prepared for the next major winter storm. Despite widespread perception that the grid has become more resilient, the data tells a different story: the actual risk of winter outages is rising, not falling. While news reports cite lowered outage risks in ERCOT’s models, these improvements stem primarily from the grid operator dramatically reducing the demand profiles used in simulations rather than from meaningful capacity improvements.
The core problem is that the combined amount of dispatchable generation from gas, coal, and nuclear sources remains roughly the same as before Uri, even as peak winter demand has increased by 20%. Nearly $50 billion has been invested primarily in solar and storage in Texas since 2021, with only a fraction of that new investment going to natural gas. Between winter 2021 and winter 2026, ERCOT added over 31 GW of solar and 15 GW of batteries but only 3.1 GW of natural gas capacity.
Solar helps meet summer demand but doesn’t contribute to winter peak demand periods that occur before sunrise and after sunset, while batteries can only discharge for a couple of hours before depleting during prolonged winter storms. For a 1-in-10 year winter storm (far less severe than Uri) occurring in 2026, the analysis projects that even with very low failure rates for gas and coal power plants, outages exceeding 12 hours are likely unless wind generation happens to align perfectly with demand. If Texas was investing $50 billion in its gas fleet, which can perform consistently across all seasons, winter reliability would not be a problem.
The report argues that legislative responses following Uri—including SB 3’s winter resiliency standards for power plants—addressed many important operational problems but missed the root cause: market design failures that drive investment toward intermittent generation rather than reliable, dispatchable capacity. The recent pattern of investing in unreliable resources while neglecting winter reliability needs mirrors the approach Texas took between 2011 and 2021, which ultimately led to the Uri disaster.
To protect Texas from the next major winter storm, policymakers must reform the ERCOT market design to better value dispatchable generation that can provide power during extended winter emergencies and require all generators to meet enforceable reliability standards. Without these reforms, Texas risks being “fooled twice” by another catastrophic winter storm.