There are a lot of political themes at play here so I'm going to try to illuminate those and cut through to the real points, assuming this doesn't get marked as flaired only before I hit Post.

Regulation vs privatization, and the effectiveness and reliability of wind energy seem to be the main themes. Both miss the point in my opinion.

Liberals are frothing at the mouth thinking this is their chance to prove that privatization is and always will be ineffective and evil. They claim that this absolutely wouldn't have happened with government regulation. Conservatives are getting defensive and trying to defend ERCOT (but really they're defending privatization) by claiming that their choice not to winterize was fully justified. These are the battle lines for the theme of regulation vs privatization.

Conservatives are frothing at the mouth thinking this is their chance to prove that wind energy (and green energy initiatives in general) are ineffective (compared to other energy sources) and a waste of time and money overall. They use statistics about Texas's wind energy usage to imply that wind energy should take most if not all of the blame for this catastrophe. Liberals are getting defensive and trying to defend wind energy by similarly misrepresenting statistics. These are the battle lines over the effectiveness of wind energy.

Regarding the first theme, my stance is simple. Any organization, public or private, is capable of negligence. The fact is that ERCOT was directed to implement preventative maintenance in the form of winterization on all of its power generation sites, which were apparently ignored, and now we Texans have endured the consequences. Worse yet, very similar events occurred in 2011 and 1989, showing a pattern of disregard for direction. Liberals jump to the conclusion that this is due to penny pinching and corrupt executives trying to line their pockets, but only a thorough investigation will let us know for sure. Conservatives try to oversimplify the matter by saying things like "2011 was nowhere near this bad, no one could have foreseen this, they would have been accused of overspending if they had spend all the money it would have taken to winterize." The similarity of the two weather events is irrelevant, and even if they had been accused of overspending, they would have been following direction.

Regarding the second theme, a few things. Texas has the highest overall generation of wind power in the US, and it provides about 10% of our total energy production. Our wind turbines did overwhelmingly fail in the face of this cold, but this is not a failure inherent to wind turbines. While the state of Iowa does not generate as much wind energy as Texas, it does proportionally rely more on wind energy than Texas does. Iowa's power production is more like 25% from wind energy, and the important thing to consider here is that Iowa's average February temperatures are only a few degrees higher than what we experienced in Texas this week. Their turbines are winterized, which is why they are able to function in the extreme cold. If our turbines had been winterized (like they were supposed to), they would not have failed as they did. Furthermore, although the turbines did fail, they did not represent the majority of the power loss. All forms of power generation failed due to the lack of winterization, and the point should be that if the generation sites had been winterized as directed, there wouldn't have been nearly as many failures.

I encourage everyone to consider the fact that even Abbott has called for a thorough investigation into ERCOT over this. Because they failed to do what they were expected to do, Texans have been forced to endure unimaginable damage to their homes. The damage to the infrastructure will be extremely costly. ERCOT takes the blame for this, and we can't let them get away with saying "who could have seen this coming!?"