And I don't think EVs are the "future" until we seriously upgrade the electrical grid. Just heating homes in Texas turned off all the lights. If every American had a car plugged in we'd all be in the dark. If I were a betting person I'd put my money on Hydrogen fuel.
First, as mentioned, the TX issues had nothing to do with the grid -- it was caused by TX's particular semi-deregulated power industry (which neither required nor provided incentives to generators/natural gas producers to protect their operations against extreme weather conditions), together with its decision not to connect to the nationwide grid to avoid federal regulation (which thus deprived them of some of the backup supply other states can obtain in emergencies).
Saying that the TX issue had nothing to do with the grid while pointing out that their grid wasn't connected to the national grid seems pretty disingenuous to me.
Also, further reading: https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/ercot-holding-emergency-board-meeting-to-discuss-grids-power-failures
OK, let me be clearer: it had nothing to do with whether the grid itself needed "upgrades," as the comment I was responding to implied.
First, let's clarify terms. When I refer to the "grid," I am referring to the collection of power lines that take the power from the power plants down to the end users. You could also be referring to include the power plants that provide the power to the grid, and some people may even extend that reference to include the people who supply the fuel to power those power plants.
The TX issue did not result from any general need to upgrade the "grid" as I defined it -- or even, in most cases, the grid + power plants. The biggest factor was that power plants could not get the fuel they need to generate that energy. The outages started largely because the upstream natural gas producers and pipelines were not equipped to operate in that cold weather. Then, once they started the rolling blackouts, those blackouts hit some of the compressor stations that were needed to move the gas that was available, so even less gas got to the power plants.
In addition, some of the power plants themselves were also not prepared for those extreme temperatures. But my understanding from what I've read is that that was secondary to the problems of just getting the fuel they needed to run.
So, yes, when many power plants cannot make power, and you have cut yourself off from out-of-state power sources, then the grid will go down. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the grid itself is sufficiently "updated." You can have a brand-spanking-new multi-billion-dollar collection of power lines and power plants, and it's still going to go down if the plants that feed that grid can't get the fuel they need to make power.
The other issue really is that the root cause of the outages was the regulatory system the state chose as a political matter, not individual owners' decisions not to make "upgrades." In a regulated system, power plants are required to meet specific standards for reliability; rates are set at a level that allows them to buy and maintain the equipment necessary to meet those reliability standards, and conversely the power plants are penalized if they fail to comply with those standards.*
TX made the decision to deregulate the power industry. Basically, people looked at the rates and said, hey, that's a sweet deal for the power plants, but customers are getting screwed, so let's deregulate and let the free market handle it more efficiently. And hey, it worked! Customers get to choose their provider and plans so they can pay a lot less during normal times. But the flip side is that each individual power supplier has the equivalent freedom to choose whether it makes economic sense to make the investments necessary to keep operating in extreme weather events; sure, there are some regulatory standards, but they're pretty basic. Most of the TX power plants made the rational economic choice that it wasn't profitable to do so, so they just went down when the weather hit. The ones who did make those investments reaped huge profits due to the tremendous spike in demand (and are now getting slammed for price gouging).
IOW, the TX power system worked precisely as it is designed to under the system TX chose. So framing the issue as the grid needing "upgrades" doesn't really seem on point when you have a system working as planned -- it sounds like blaming negligence when it was an intentional choice. The real issue is whether TX will decide that it needs more regulations to protect its people against the downside of a free power market. Given current politics within the state, I'd give that the proverbial snowball's chance.
But I'm getting really off-track here, because I geek out over this stuff. My point was only that the TX event does not support the claim that the "grid" needs significant upgrades, because the problem resulted from a combination of political decisions made by one out of 50 states + freakishly cold weather for an extended period of time. And because of the measures taken, the power interruptions were limited to a week or two, not months. In reality, the vast majority of us -- even in TX -- have reliable power the vast majority of the time. So I just don't see the TX event as dissuading people from buying EVs.
*I used to represent a power plant. Its contract with the grid operator literally paid it just to be available -- it got a fixed payment every year simply to be available to run if called on, and that fixed payment was designed to cover the fixed expenses needed to build and maintain the plant. If it actually did run, it got paid more. OTOH, if it was not able to come online within 2 hrs of being called on, it was penalized and lost some of that fixed payment.
