The Disconnect: Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout hide episode contents show episode contents

Mose Buchele

March 10, 2023

The Texas Grid Under Pressure

In this bonus episode, you’ll hear a panel of experts we brought together to mark two years since the 2021 blackout, where we discuss the future of the Texas grid in the face of climate change and the increasingly extreme weather linked to it.

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October 31, 2022

The Campaign

Nearly two years after the big blackout in Texas, how big of an issue is the power grid in the 2022 race for governor? We talk with Julian Aguilar, a reporter for the Texas Newsroom. The Disconnect Season 2 is a project of The Texas Newsroom, the collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations […]

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September 8, 2022

The Midnight Connection

We’ve already learned how Texas (or at least most of it) is an energy island — mostly cut off from grids in other states. In this episode, we’ll hear about the time when one power company went rogue and threw a transmission line across the Oklahoma border. This is the story of why they tried […]

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September 1, 2022

BONUS: The Megawatt We Don’t Use

We’ve talked about the supply-side fixes — but what about the demand side? The Disconnect Season 2 is a project of The Texas Newsroom, the collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in the state. It received support from FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight […]

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August 25, 2022

The Fixes

A year and a half after the blackout, lots of Texans are still wondering if they can rely on the power grid. After conservation alerts and one pretty close call this summer, it can seem like the grid is still on a knife’s edge. We look at what’s changed, what hasn’t and how that lack […]

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August 11, 2022

The Money

Texans have seen their electric bills rise dramatically since the blackouts last year. We’ll break down all the links in the electric supply chain that each need to get paid — and explain how we’ll still be paying the costs of the blackout for decades to come. The Disconnect Season 2 is a project of […]

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August 4, 2022

The Toll

In the time since the blackout, state officials, ERCOT and power generators have tried to convince Texans that they’ve got things under control. But a lot of people aren’t convinced. And with good reason. In this episode, we’ll explore how the trauma of the blackout is still with us — and how we still haven’t […]

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November 18, 2021

Bonus: The Winterizing

Texas lawmakers passed a law earlier this year requiring power plants to winterize — but what does that really mean? And what about winterizing other things that are needed to make sure the lights don’t go out in a storm again?

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About

Millions of Texans lost power during a winter storm in February. Hundreds may have died. And people wondered: “how could this happen in the energy capital of the U.S.?” To understand how we got the electric grid we have in Texas today, you have to understand the electric grid we had up until a little more than 20 years ago — and how a group of power companies, environmentalists, cities and state lawmakers hatched a plan to completely remake it. Did the experiment fail?

Host

Mose Buchele is the Austin-based broadcast reporter for KUT’s NPR partnership StateImpact Texas. He has been on staff at KUT 90.5 since 2009, covering local and state issues. Mose has also worked as a blogger on politics and an education reporter at his hometown paper in Western Massachusetts. He holds masters degrees in Latin American Studies and Journalism from UT Austin.

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