AUSTIN, Texas — While millions of Texans sat in the dark and freezing cold for days, one part of Texas fared much better.
In El Paso, only about 3,000 people had a power outage in their homes and more than 2,000 of those saw their power restored within just 5 minutes. No homes in the city of nearly 700,000 residents spent days without power or heat. That's because El Paso upgraded their system after a 2011 freeze that knocked out power. Now, power stations can withstand temperatures down to negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
El Paso is also not part of the Texas electric grid that failed in much of the rest of the state. It's part of the Western Interconnection, so it wasn’t affected when ERCOT initiated blackouts across the state.
"El Paso survived this one, but it's something that utilities are going to have to remain on their toes," said Tom Fullerton, economics and finance professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. "There can be more weather events in the future. They might be more severe than what we saw this year or in 2011. So no one can really rest."
Fullerton says there are plenty of lessons to be learned from last week's weather and now it's up to state leaders to enact necessary changes to make sure it never happens again.
"I think the best lesson that can be learned from what happened this year is that, in an era of climate change, it's important to weatherize or winterize public utility systems, water, gas and electric," he said.
Fullerton says the price hikes needed to make the changes are manageable since it will be spread over a large customer base.