Lelo Nxumalo

In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri descended on Texas, triggering one of the most catastrophic infrastructure failures in modern American history. Temperatures plunged, demand spiked, and the state’s isolated power grid—operated by ERCOT—collapsed. Millions lost power for days. While utility companies provided their own outage estimates, we can use remote sensing to independently verify the scale of the economic damage. Using Python, Google Earth Engine, and the Difference-in-Differences (DiD) framework, we analyzed the blackout from space. The Natural Experiment: A Tale of Two Grids To measure the true impact of the grid failure, we cannot simply look at Houston in isolation. We need a control group—a city that faced the same freezing temperatures but did not lose power. Enter El Paso . Unlike the rest of Texas, El Paso is not on the ERCOT grid; it is connected to the Western Interconnection. This crea...