Is the Texas Grid Ready for Winter 2026–27? What’s Changed Five Years After Uri

Every fall, the same question comes up at Texas dinner tables: is the power going to stay on this winter? After February 2021, it’s a fair thing to ask.

The short answer for winter 2026–27: the statewide grid is in much better shape than it was before Winter Storm Uri. It has now come through three winter storms that set or approached demand records without a single rolling blackout. ERCOT’s own December forecast puts the odds of an energy emergency at about 3% in the riskiest hour.

But “better” isn’t “bulletproof.” Demand is growing faster than at any time in the grid’s history, a few weak spots from 2021 were never fully closed, and the outages most Texans actually experience in winter don’t come from ERCOT at all. Here’s what changed, what didn’t, and what it means for your home and your electricity bill.

What actually went wrong in February 2021

Uri wasn’t a demand problem first. It was a supply collapse. As temperatures fell, power plants of every type froze or ran out of fuel at the moment Texans needed them most.

The federal investigation by FERC and NERC found that freezing equipment caused 44% of the unplanned plant outages, and fuel supply problems caused another 31%. Natural gas plants made up 58% of the units that failed, mostly because gas is the largest part of the fleet. Wind (27%), coal (6%) and solar (2%) failed too. Even one reactor at a nuclear plant tripped offline.

The fuel problem fed on itself. Gas wells and processing plants froze, and some of the gas facilities that did keep running lost electricity in the rolling blackouts. That starved more power plants of fuel.

To keep the whole grid from collapsing, ERCOT ordered 20,000 megawatts of rolling outages, the largest controlled blackout in U.S. history. More than 4.5 million Texans lost power, some for four days. The state health department’s final count was 246 deaths, about two-thirds of them from hypothermia.

Wholesale prices sat at the $9,000 per megawatt-hour cap for roughly four days. Customers on wholesale-indexed plans, most famously Griddy’s, received bills in the thousands of dollars.

What has changed since Uri

The biggest fix is the most boring one: power plants now have to winterize, and someone checks. Before 2021, cold-weather preparation was mostly voluntary. Here are the changes that matter most for this winter.

Batteries are the change most people haven’t noticed. They help most on cold mornings, when demand spikes before the sun comes up and solar can’t help yet. ERCOT expects about 9,100 MW of battery output to be available in the 8 a.m. risk hour this December.

ERCOT’s outlook for winter 2026–27

ERCOT’s first forecast for this winter is reassuring. Its December 2026 outlook, published October 2, puts the chance of an energy emergency at about 2.95% in the riskiest hour, 8 a.m. That’s well under the 10% level ERCOT treats as elevated.

The grid also has a track record now. Since Uri, Texas has set a new winter demand record three times, most recently 80,560 MW on February 20, 2025, about 15% above the peak ERCOT managed to serve during Uri. None of those storms brought rolling outages. Neither did Winter Storm Fern in January 2026, when ERCOT didn’t even need to ask the public to conserve.

The forecast assumes average December weather. ERCOT also runs a severe storm case, with morning demand between 78,000 and 90,000 MW. It calls the 90,000 MW end remote, but that’s the scenario that matters for a 2021-style event.

Winter risk is different from summer risk. In summer, the tight hours are around sunset, when solar fades. In winter, the danger is a dark, frigid morning: demand peaks around 8 a.m., solar provides almost nothing, and wind can drop to a few thousand megawatts. ERCOT expects only about 27 MW from more than 40,000 MW of solar in that hour. That’s why a cold, still morning, not the coldest night, is what grid operators watch.

What still hasn’t been fixed

A true repeat of Uri would still be more than the grid can handle. That’s the finding most coverage skips. NERC’s assessment for last winter (2025–26) ran ERCOT through an extreme scenario with plant failures modeled on Uri, adjusted for the new weatherization rules. Reserves came out at negative 20%, meaning a supply shortfall. Under normal winter conditions, NERC put the chance of rolling outages on the peak day at just 1.8%.

In other words, Texas has made ordinary hard freezes routine. It hasn’t made a once-in-a-generation storm safe. A few specific gaps remain:

• Cold beyond the design standard. During Fern, wind chills in Amarillo hit −21°F, colder than the state rule requires plants to handle. Plants held up, but the rule has a limit, and a longer or colder storm could exceed it.
• The gas supply chain. Texas now requires critical gas facilities to prepare for winter, and ERCOT expects no major fuel problems this year. But much of the 2021 fuel shortfall started at wellheads, and a multi-day, statewide freeze is still the real test.
• Demand is growing faster than ever. ERCOT received 225 large-load connection requests in 2025, about 70% of them data centers. Its preliminary forecast shows peak demand of nearly 368,000 MW by 2032, though many of those projects will never be built. Critics, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation, argue that new on-demand generation such as gas plants hasn’t kept pace with that growth. Supporters of the current approach point to the new batteries and SB 6’s power to cut data centers first.
• Your neighborhood lines. In most winter storms, the outages Texans experience come from ice-coated power lines and falling limbs, not a statewide shortage. During Fern, ERCOT reported no grid-wide outages, but local utilities still had ice-related ones. No ERCOT reform changes that.

What it means for your electricity bill this winter

The Griddy disaster can’t happen to a household anymore. Since September 2021, Texas law has banned plans that pass raw wholesale prices straight to residential customers. The wholesale price cap is also lower, at $5,000 per megawatt-hour instead of $9,000. But your plan type still decides how exposed you are to a bad winter.

• Fixed-rate plans lock your energy charge for the contract term. A cold snap that sends wholesale prices to the cap doesn’t change your rate. Your utility’s delivery charges can still change, because those pass through on every plan.
• Variable-rate and month-to-month plans let your provider change your rate from one month to the next. After a costly winter event, those rates can rise. This is also where you land by default if your contract expires and you don’t pick a new one.
• Bill-credit plans are a winter wildcard. A credit that kicks in at 1,000 kWh can make a mild-weather month expensive if your usage drops below the threshold. Check your plan’s Electricity Facts Label against your actual winter and spring usage.

The practical move: check when your contract ends. If it expires between December and March, renew or switch before it lapses, so you don’t roll onto a month-to-month rate in the middle of winter. Homes with electric heat should expect their highest bills of the year in January and February, so usage matters more than the advertised rate at 1,000 kWh.

If you’re not sure your current rate is competitive, you can compare plans in your ZIP code in a couple of minutes.

How to get your home ready

The most likely winter outage at your house is a local one that lasts hours, not a statewide one that lasts days. Prepare for both.

1. Sign up for ERCOT’s alerts. TXANS, the Texas Advisory and Notification System, sends grid condition alerts by text or email. A “Weather Watch” means ERCOT expects higher demand but normal conditions; an Energy Emergency Alert is the one to act on.
2. Save your utility’s outage number. Report outages to your wires company (Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP Texas or TNMP), not your retail provider. Our guide on how to report a power outage in Texas lists each one.
3. Protect your pipes. Insulate exposed pipes, know where your main water shutoff is, and drip faucets on exterior walls during hard freezes.
4. Plan for heat without power. Keep blankets and warm layers handy. Never run a generator, grill or gas oven indoors to stay warm. In 2021, carbon monoxide poisoning killed Texans who were trying to stay warm.
5. Keep a small kit. Flashlights, batteries, phone power banks, three days of water and food that doesn’t need cooking.
6. Use less at peak times. If ERCOT asks for conservation, the tight hours on winter mornings are usually 6 to 9 a.m. Lower the thermostat a few degrees and delay laundry and dishwashers.

The bottom line

For an ordinary Texas winter, even a hard freeze, the grid is far more prepared than it was in 2021, and it has proven that through three record-setting cold snaps. ERCOT’s December outlook puts emergency odds near 3%. The remaining risk is a storm as severe and as long as Uri, and that risk is lower than before but not zero.

For your household, the two things you control are your preparation and your plan. Lock in a fixed rate before winter if your contract is ending, and be ready for a local outage of a few hours. That covers the risks you’re most likely to face.

Sources

• ERCOT, Monthly Outlook for Resource Adequacy, December 2026 (published Oct 2, 2026)
• NERC, 2025–2026 Winter Reliability Assessment
• FERC, Final report on the February 2021 freeze
• KSAT / Texas DSHS, Texas puts final estimate of winter storm death toll at 246
• ERCOT, Post-event report: Winter Storm Fern and Monthly Operational Overview, January 2026
• ERCOT, System Planning and Weatherization Update (Feb 2026)
• ERCOT, 2025 peak demand records and Monthly Report, January 2024
• S&P Global, Texas lawmakers pass weatherization and pricing changes, ban on residential wholesale-indexed plans and $5,000/MWh price cap
• Bracewell, Texas Senate Bill 6 and large-load interconnection
• Industrial Info, First Texas Energy Fund-backed project comes online
• Texas Tribune, ERCOT and the data center surge (June 17, 2026)
• Texas Scorecard, ERCOT faces higher winter storm outage risk (summarizing the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s analysis)