The first night of Winter Storm Uri, when temperatures went below freezing, Sandra Edwards woke up on her bedroom floor, soaking wet, lying on her back.
Edwards, a community activist who lives with her two cats in Fifth Ward, has no idea what knocked her unconscious, but believes she stepped out of bed and slipped on ice that formed on the ground.
“I had icicles hanging from my ceiling,” Edwards said. “I had ice on the floor.”
Physically Edwards recovered, but one year after the freeze her house is still just as vulnerable to damage.
For many like Edwards who live in underserved and under-resourced neighborhoods across the region, the winter freeze just exacerbated home damage from previous disasters like
Hurricane Harvey.
Now many of those Houstonians are still waiting for disaster aid and have few resources if another storm were to hit, making them even more vulnerable than when the winter storm came through in February 2021 – and have no real assurance the situation would be better if a storm happened tomorrow. In fact, they’re in worse shape.
A year ago, temperatures across the state plummeted, in many cases to below freezing. Many Texans had snow flurries in their backyards, and
millions lost power for days or even weeks. People also went without water in major cities, including
Houston, which had a
boil water advisory for three days. According to a
report from the Texas Department of State Health Services, 246 Texans died as a result of the storm. Harris County had 43 deaths, the most of any county in the state.
Texas has its
own electric grid, which is different from how other states get power. That grid wasn’t designed with winter weather in mind. When Texans started to crank up their heat during the freeze, it threatened the grid’s stability. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the grid and implemented rolling blackouts to keep it from shutting down.
After the outages, Texas lawmakers enacted legislation they said would improve the state’s electricity system. Still, experts say the grid is vulnerable.
Some people already entered Winter Storm Uri at a disadvantage. Edwards, whose home was so damaged by Harvey that she was displaced for two years, only had one liveable room by the time temperatures started to drop below freezing last February.
It was in that one room where she found herself cold and wet and on the floor. Edwards says because of existing damage, water seeped into her house and onto her floors, and froze over when temperatures plunged.
Like many Houstonians, she also lost power. In Edwards’ case, her house was without electricity for four days.
“It’s crazy because our system has failed us left and right,” Edwards said. “We don’t know what to do no more, so it’s just like we’re playing Russian roulette.”
For two of the four days she spent without power, Edwards said she relied on a generator for heat and electricity. She was concerned about more water leaking into her home, which one year later still has mold damage.
“I stayed in here and I endured,” Edwards said. “I cleaned as much as I could, I bought gallons of bleach and ammonia, and did what I could.”
Edwards said a lot of her neighbors have the same issues, and some have stopped even looking for assistance, making do with homes in disrepair.
On top of that, billions of dollars in debt that companies incurred from the storm will be passed onto Texas ratepayers over the next 20 years.
Edwards says that isn’t right.
“If you catch hell, don’t pass it on to us,” she said. “We’re already catching hell here. Why would you pass your problem onto us and make us pay for it? If you fixed the grid, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
She hopes electricity providers will have some grace for people who are unable to pay some or all of their bills after being hit by multiple disasters like Harvey and Winter Storm Uri.
But electricity bills are going up for Houstonians: As the economy began to rebound from the pandemic thanks to increasing COVID-19 vaccine availability, consumer electricity prices started to rise by the end of the year, according to the
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Wholesale prices went up across the country, according to the EIA, but were especially volatile in the ERCOT market last year because of the freeze. In hopes of enticing more power generators to contribute electricity to the grid during the storm, ERCOT allowed the price of wholesale electricity to reach its maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour, or $9 per kilowatt hour. Texas residents normally pay between 12 and 20 cents per kilowatt hour.
Although the Texas electricity market works differently than the rest of the country – mostly thanks to the now disgraced company
Enron pushing state lawmakers to deregulate the market in the 1990s – Texas is still the country’s main supplier of natural gas used to generate electricity, according to the EIA.
The freeze in February 2021 disrupted that natural gas supply, and from there it was basic economics: less supply met with more demand – people turning on the heat – meant prices went up, and natural gas prices have largely stayed elevated since then. That’s translated to increased electricity bills across the country.