lots of interesting stuff in this thread
regarding Texas' power outage - the lie (misinformation) is across town before the truth has its shoes on
too many of us are so enamored of the internet, that we don't investigate the truth of what is said/written
too many of us think that being first is the arbiter of truth
i think we need to re-think, re-design and re-build the entire grid
components to be used: (my apologies for not having sources for this information)
-solar farms, wind farms, hydro - as we have and are building
-small thorium reactors - no radioactive waste owing to relatively short half life of processes - these are about the size of a chest freezer (maybe 1m by 1 m by 2m??) and can fit in a corner of ones basement or in a small outbuilding (at least in most of sub-urban and rural areas)
-solar panels on the roof of houses - apparently, even where i live in upstate New York (Rochester), where (being in the lee of Lake Ontario), its cloudy a lot, there is enough solar radiation to power my house, even on a cloudy day, let alone on a sunny day
-tesla's 10kW(?) batteries, or things like that, for backup in the evening
-appliance that run on DC instead of AC, so i don't need an inverter
-connection to the grid for those long cold winters, with a power factor corrected, harmonic content corrected AC to DC converter, which is not consistent with my DC power from solar - no synchronization problem
-maybe a small fan like, jet engine like "windmill" for those days when its windy, to take advantage of the wind power (during storms, when the sun isn't out?)
i'm sure there are lots of other ideas from lots of people that will help
caveat: every decision has its upside and its downside
if we want to understand the environmental cost, we need to look at the entire lifecycle (cradle to grave) of whatever we want to use in the re-built grid
caveat: no one can keep their information safe - as exemplified by various recent (and not so recent) cyber attacks therefore, the new grid, "smart"(?) or otherwise, needs a different and closed interconnect and control