Unit 1 Lesson 1

What Happened in Texas in February of 2021?

News Story from February 18 2021

This news story by PBS NewsHour was broadcasted during the week of the crisis while many Texans were still out of power. While watching pay special attention to factors that contributed to the crisis and how Texans were impacted.

News Articles about the Texas Energy Crisis

The following news stories describe what was happening during the crisis. In your note packet, record information about factors that caused the crisis and how people were impacted. Some examples are provided below. You may also use the above video to add information.

Copy of P.1 Lesson 1 Reading Texas Article 1

Article 1: February's Winter Storm Caused More Than 111 Deaths

Copy of P.1 Lesson 1 Reading Texas Article 2

Article 2: Two Million Homes in Texas Regain Power

Copy of P.1 Lesson 1 Reading Texas Article 3

Article 3: Winter Storm Crisis in Texas

Copy of P.1 Lesson 1 Reading Texas Article 4

Article 4: Windmills Are Blamed for Texs Blackouts

What factors contributed to the Texas Energy Crisis?

Winter storm - snow/ice (normally not so cold in TX)
Cold weather required more heat in homes than usual
High winds during storm
Power grid failure - Texas on separate grid
No “back up” to the power grid

How were people impacted by the Texas Energy Crisis?

Anxiety
Deaths
Lack of food
Hotel prices increased
People hospitalized
Financial hardship
Medical devices that need electricity didn’t work

Patterns in the Texas Energy Crisis

The map to the right contains data about the percentage of customers in Texas without power on Tuesday (February 16 2021) at 12:15 pm.

Consider the following questions as you look for patterns in the data:

How does your location impact whether or not you have power?
Is there any clear pattern to who has power and who does not have power?

In class we discussed that,

There seemed to be more outages in the Southeast compared to the Northwest
Many counties that borded other states were more likely to have more power
The pattern is very scattered, there are many counties with high amounts of power loss next to counties with low amount of power loss

Initial Models for Energy Transfer

In class, we chose two buildings in our community that have electricity. They can be close to each other or far apart. We made a model to show what structures transfer energy to those two buildings. An example model is included below. Note: this is an initial model, we will modify this in a later lesson (4) as we learn.

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