Shortly after Texas lost much of its electric generation to problems related to cold weather—plunging almost 4 million customers in the state into darkness and cold for up to four days in mid-February—it was clear that equipment failures across the board were in part to blame. Frozen gauges at natural gas wellheads prevented enough gas from being delivered to power plants.
S&P Global Platts Analytics said about 13% of natural gas production was offline because of the cold weather. Equipment at power plants that received enough gas or coal failed and shuttered the plants. Blades on wind turbines froze.