alt Hacker NewsWhat you talked about is not a Texas grid problem, but a local problem. The Texas grid itself is very reliable.
> Also in 2021 210 people died. This is a huge deal. This wasn't just a little outage.
Yes, a rare storm knocked out power and people died. It is a big deal and a lot of things changed after the event.
But I want to put it into perspective. In 2024, ~62,800 people in Europe died to heat-related events.
Yeah, but that isn't really an apples to apples comparison. Texas for example had ~400 heat deaths in 2024 depending on where you look but in 2023 it was 334 or 563 depending on your criteria [1].
>But I want to put it into perspective. In 2024, ~62,800 people in Europe died to heat-related events.
Most of these deaths are not because of electrification but the fact that homes are built out of bricks and mortar and become ovens with heat waves that get hotter each year and ~10% to ~20% [2] of homes in Europe have air conditioning meanwhile ~95% [3] of homes have air conditioning. Your apples to oranges comparison mostly shows how Europe is generically unprepared for climate adaption (specifically heat resilience) and has nothing to do with electrification stability.
[1] https://www.texasenvironment.org/news-room/heat-related-deat... [2] It's all over the place some places like UK are around 5% adoption while southern Europe can be close to as much as 95% adoption. [3] https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/state/...