WASHINGTON — A devastating winter storm that has plunged Texas into an electricity crisis offers warning signs for the U.S. as the Biden administration seeks to prepare for a future in which extreme weather is a greater risk and America is almost entirely powered by renewable energy.
Generating energy is one challenge. But an equally daunting task centers on storing power from renewable energy for extreme events like the one hammering Texas.
In Texas, the center of a wave of outages across the Southern and central parts of the U.S., the primary electric grid suffered a one-two punch wrought by the deep freeze: off-the-charts demand for power as Texans tried to heat their homes and power plants that simply failed to produce power when people needed it the most.
Wind and solar, still fairly small slices of the state’s energy mix, played only a minimal role in the sudden power…
