I don't know what you mean by "regularly". The article states that the last time this happened was 2014, nine years ago.

Texas had some hiccups last year

Because it didn't winterize much of its generation despite lots of warnings it needed to do so, and doesn't interconnect with the national grid because they didn't want to have to follow federal regulations.

Yes some would consider every ten years as regular.

One must put in perspective the difference though. This is a single, contained event during a fairly extreme weather scenario. Contrast that to what could have been a whole winter-long event in Europe had the continent not taken extreme and well-coordinated action very early (and had the international community coordinating as well). Let’s compare them on proper footings.

It's not even that extreme for the northern US. Just that these temps usually happen in Late Jan-Feb. 60 miles east of Buffalo I'm still waiting for the first shovelable snowfall for the season.

Huh, not seeing the difference really, expectations there were also usually not a whole winter-long event but contained events? Or otherwise then totally the same though to the planned load shedding SA is running on now on different levels for some time? Doesn't make it better..

European utilities never struggle during extreme hot or cold snaps, right?

Blackouts happen if the power lines themselves get damaged. But rationing and rolling blackouts due to insufficient capacity are basically unheard-of.

Rationing happens, but it only affects large industry etc who have contracted to the arrangement.

Which is what this scenario was.

I heard it happened in California.

"In August 2020, hundreds of thousands of Californians briefly lost power in rolling blackouts ..."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/california-blackouts-power-grid/st...

There are various ways to prepare for future potential badness. One solution embraced by Texas, amounts to "yolo", resulting in gas-fired plants being inoperable during the cold snap in Feb 2021[0] . A different solution, favored by many other locations across the globe including in Europe, is for there to be regulations set by the government, saying "you must perform this upgrade". While these regulations cannot alter the fundamental laws of physics, it is eminently possible to “winterize” various aspects of power generation and delivery systems through practices like insulating pipelines.

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/texas-power-grid-fai...

Doomsday scenario? Narh, but some areas are dependent on electric heating to keep people warm and fed. And there's no backup plan because it was considered inconcievable that electricity wouldn't be widely available.

Most of us will manage power cuts just fine.

The Northeastern US largely gets its gas and electric power from National Grid plc. headquartered in London, England.

I guess that's not Europe.

I'm sure that if we've looked on the electricity consumption per person in the EU vs the US there will be a huge difference towards the US. The American living standards are vastly higher in terms of electricity consumption and are supported by a poorly maintained infrastructure most of the times.

It's a weird thing so say that a higher electricity consumption equals to "vastly higher living standards" when the higher consumption might just be in part because of badly insulated homes.

Americans pay way more attention to ventilation, air quality etc. We euros barely use AC, seeing mold at home in big cities like Porto is just part of living there. I don't think Americans would accept it.

(Many) Americans also equate higher living standards with a huge TV which is generally turned on.

Is that really a lot in the scheme of things? I don't have CFL backlit LCD TV info handy since they've been supplanted by LEDs, but I looked at Best Buy (a big US seller of these sorts of things) and found a popular $500 65" and their most insane 98" $15,000 Samsung ones, 190 and 360 watts respectively.

I'm old and by my family's standards 65" diagonal would be questionable at best, so I checked in the vicinity of 48", 43" and 50" only gets you down to 120-5 watts. Add probably not very many watts for whatever's supplying the signal and it doesn't sound like a big deal, although of course everything adds up.

Make sure you are comparing the same thing.

Several times here and elsewhere I've seen comments from Europeans mentioning they use 5-6 kWh per day which is average to a little above average for their country and wondering how Americans average 29 kWh per day.

Almost invariably, when I cannot figure out how the heck one can get by on 5-6 kWh per day, since I use at least 10 kWh in the early summer when it is warm enough to need no air conditioning and cool enough to not need any cooling or fans and ask for details, I get the same answer.

That answer is that they are using gas for house heating, water heating, clothes drying, and cooking, leaving only a computer or two, a fridge, a few lights, and maybe a TV to be powered by electricity. Americans are far more likely to have an all electric household.

When comparing energy use instead of just electrical use Americans still average higher then Europeans but it is no longer a huge difference.

Some European cities also have district heating, which is managed differently than at-home heat creation.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/berlin-kicks-of...

If that kind of weather would hit Europe right now I'm pretty sure we'd be in dire straits.

Can't even remember the last time I experienced a blackout.

Extreme weather events are actually very predictable the question is do you build resilience for these rare events? If not you get 1953.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953