I'm not sure I understand how low frequency could cause the system to crash.

Having spent 35 years working at gas fired power plants, I can say that the damage caused by a low frequency blackout would probably take a couple of months to repair. The biggest problem in trying to repair things is parts availability. None of the plants keep any inventory on hand like they did 25 or 30 years ago. Next would be the manpower. Knowledgeable people are not standing on the curb waiting on a job and every plant would need them.
I talked to the control operator at the plant where I worked about 15 minutes after the power went off and he was still so shook up he could hardly talk. And this guy has been a control operator for 20 years and has just about seen it all.

Having spent 35 years working at gas fired power plants, I can say that the damage caused by a low frequency blackout would probably take a couple of months to repair. The biggest problem in trying to repair things is parts availability. None of the plants keep any inventory on hand like they did 25 or 30 years ago. Next would be the manpower. Knowledgable people are not standing on the curb waiting on a job and every plant would need them.
I talked to the control operator at the plant where I worked about 15 minutes after the power went off and he was still so shook up he could hardly talk. And this guy has been a control operator for 20 years and has just about seen it all.

Let's compare our "grid / system / setup" with those in the upper Midwest that routinely get that sub-freezing weather.........they don't have state wide outages or reports of catastrophic collapse.

Their grid is built for negative temperatures because that’s what routinely happens every winter. Ours is built for 105° summer temperatures, because that’s what we routinely get here. Houses in Montana aren’t built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, either.

I’m not saying the recommendations to winter-proof the plants shouldn’t have been done, nor am I saying that is the sole reason we almost lost the grid (because it’s not, and I’m very interested to see what shakes out, because I think it’s going to be a combination of the war on coal, green energy, not building for severe cold, ERCOT, PUC, Feds, state government and maybe more).

People from the northeast and Midwest were laughing at us all week, while not understanding we don’t have snow plows and salt trucks like they do because we get snow or ice for a couple of days and not a week of single digits and snow routinely. We can afford to wait a day until it’s 68° the next day and it melts. I have a college buddy that lives outside of Pittsburgh. His parents’ house has a gas furnace and window units, no central AC. Blew my mind, until I realized it just doesn’t get that hot there. A lot of us have heat pumps, which I’m sure people are wishing wasn’t the case after last week.

Improvements to the grid need to be made. This is twice in a decade that the grid was stressed by winter weather and nearly suffered a catastrophic event. It needs to be fixed, but comparing it to the Midwest doesn’t make anymore sense than saying the Upper Peninsula should be built for two months of 105° in the summer.

Abbott got his best robotic act out yesterday and emphatically stated this would be fixed. We'll see if recommendations are made or mandates will happen this time.

Abbott got his best robotic act out yesterday and emphatically stated this would be fixed. We'll see if recommendations are made or mandates will happen this time.