The Texas Catastrophic Blackouts: Lessons For The Developing Countries

The Texas Catastrophic Blackouts: Lessons For The Developing Countries

The recent severe snowstorm in the US led to a catastrophic power outage in Texas leaving millions of people without access to power or heat for several days, with a mounting death toll that has yet to be fully tallied. The state was about 4 minutes and seconds away from a total grid collapse that would have left the state's residents for weeks or months without power. If that were to have happened, tens of thousands of people would have been at the risk of freezing to death.  

Political leaders in Asia, Africa and Latin America, well aware that reliable and affordable electricity for their burgeoning middle classes is a pre-requisite of staying in office, would no doubt incredulously ask “How could this happen in Texas, the energy power-house of the US, the country which surpassed Russia in 2011 to become the world's largest producer of natural gas and overtook Saudi Arabia in 2018 to become the world's largest producer of oil?”

Energy planners and grid engineers in many developing countries work with creaky grid infrastructure and frequent breakdowns lead many of their customers to own diesel gen-sets as ready backups. The irony will not be lost: last