My understanding is that the GRID isn't the problem. The overall demand during winter freezes isn't near as high as the demand during a typical summer day when everyone's AC is running full tilt. The problem is on the generation side of things--several of the generators brought on-line to handle short-term peak power incidents can't handle the cold and their pipes freeze--which means they can't be relied upon for short-term peak power incidents brought on by cold. Even more oddly, I am told that the generation equipment in question in in NORTH Texas, which gets more of that sort of weather than placers further south. ISTM that some power-company systems engineer missed something pretty darned obvious during top-level requirements definition (but that's water under the bridge at this point--as so often with engineering of complex equipment, stuff that would be cheap and easy to account for during initial requirements definition is enormously costly to retrofit after the hardware is built).

As a not-unrelated aside, Texas still has some of the highest electric rates in the country--and the most profitable power *generation* (there's that word again) in the country.

Using this data to brainstorm for candidate solutions is left as an exercise for the reader.