The Disconnect: Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout

The Disconnect: Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout > All Episodes

September 8, 2022

The Midnight Connection

By: Mose Buchele

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 and how they failed to build a bridge off the island — and how it shaped the Texas grid today.

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 Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.


Episodes

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 […]

Listen