February 17, 2021
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40:23Now Playing(Feb. 17) Watch live as Texas Governor Greg Abbott gives an update on the power crisis triggered by an onslaught of severe winter weather throughout the southern U.S. He speaks in Austin on Wednesday, February 17, 2021.
The crisis that has knocked out power for days to millions of homes and businesses in Texas and across the central U.S. is getting worse, with blackouts expected to last until at least Thursday.
Texas’s grid operator cut power to 2.8 million homes Wednesday morning, just hours after restoring service to 700,000 households. Load on the state’s power system fell overnight to the lowest level since early Monday, when the agency instituted rolling blackouts to keep the grid from total collapse amid an extreme cold blast. The data signal that the agency has made little to no progress in getting the lights and heat back on.
While the agency was able to bring 1 gigawatt of power back onto the system during the past hour, about 46 gigawatts remains offline as of midday Wednesday -- enough to power 9.2 million homes.
In the meantime, economic fallout is cascading. U.S. oil production has plunged by nearly 40%. Fracking in the top U.S. shale plays has gone dark. Wheat futures surged as the freeze snarled grain shipments. Coronavirus vaccine shipment are delayed. Amazon.com Inc. closed facilities from Illinois to Texas.
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