All righty! Okay so Texas' Grid is run by ERCOT a 501c not a private company and they oversee the powerplants and coordinate when some are offline for maintenance and such. In Feb. 2020 a cascade of issues hit the state at once. When dealing with the electric load (power on the grid) its a super delicate thing... you cant have to much power on the lines if there isn't a need or the grid will collapse and if to much power is needed the opposite can happen.

During the freeze, two huge things happened. The first one was the freezing temps going as far south as they did and how long they lasted. It froze the LNG pipelines that fed the power plants and while up in Dallas that was just pure stupidity in the Rio Grande Valley these temps were not in any sort of plan. The second thing was the wind turbines froze. Now if you are like me you go well they have them in the north and midwest and they are fine so what made the ones in Texas freeze.... come to find out they literally discovered simply speaking a new form of ice that only happens in very specific climates like Texas. Even with the freeze, there was high humidity so this unique kind of ice crystals formed that no one knew would form on wind turbines.

Once the freeze passed there were limited options to quickly fix the grid. Since the grid failure was caused by a sudden spike in power needs the grid needed a solution that could suck the hell out of power really artificially increasing the power needs. Guess what fits that bill! BTC mining! While others talked about and to a point are still pursuing data centers the issue with them is that Texas needed something that Could also turn off and data centers cant really do that without causing damage to the systems.

BTC thus continues to be the best and easiest fix to address these swings. The state pays them in electrical credits to turn off and the companies have made hella money doing so. Since the freeze there have been several storms/weather events that have required even more power than during that freeze and the grid has been fine! It really is a fantastic solution at least when it comes to Texas!