You also pay for power you don't even use, from other power providers, in the case of extreme crisis, it seems. I've never lived there but from the outside Texas's power situation seems broken at best.
The 100 year winter freeze I lost power for two days, that was the longest ever.
Haven't lost power since then, didn't lose power for a couple years before that.
We have the cheapest rates because of the way distribution and providers are setup.
The problem with big user bills were SV companies like Griddy tricking people into buying variable rate electricity, something we made illegal since then.
In my family alone, my brother and his wife lost power at the apartment they had then for 3 days during the ~2014 winter storm, during which our apartment lost power for around a day. My parents lost their power for all 4 days of the storm last year, and had to travel 15 miles or so to my brothers house after their inside temperature dropped below freezing on day 3. They just let us know their power is out again this afternoon. My wife and I are lucky enough to have since purchased a house close to some critical infrastructure so we've rarely lost power comparatively, but we still lose power several times throughout each summer during heat waves.
I also want to reiterate: this happened in 2011, again in 2014, again in 2021, and again in 2022. The storm in 2021 was objectively the worst of the bunch, but 2011 was similar. It is _not_ a 100 year freeze. It is happening more regularly, and our government has ignored recommendations to better prepare for it going on over a decade now.
EDIT: Just to round this out, a federal report was provided in the wake of the last "100 year" storm that occurred in 2011[1]. In it, there are several dozen recommendations, many of which were at least in part the cause of the 2021 outages as well.
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[1]: https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-re...
And I disagree with your assessment of our weather and government.
A quick look at Centerpoint's own outage tracker[1] shows outages everywhere in different parts of Texas.
1. https://gis.centerpointenergy.com/outagetracker/?WT.ac=OC_Im...
> Campground You realize most people love in apartments right? Most apartments don't have fireplaces.
No, I mean the little burners you put on top of portable propane tanks, that are usually used for BBQ's or while camping. Searching "campground propane burner" in Amazon shows several hundred results of what I'm talking about. They don't require a campground to operate.
> Or fix the damn infrastructure.
You and your fear exists in the reality that is right now, which includes bad infrastructure, that will almost certainly take years to fix. If you desire to not live in fear, for the next few years, you can easily do it with minimal, extremely common in places where it's cold, preparation. If you desire to continue living in short term fear, when it's so easy to mitigate that fear, then well I guess you do you.
I'm having trouble believing that having a bit of extra food and water available is considered some large burden. It's universally suggested by all entities that deal with emergencies: https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/f&web.pdf
> If I were in that situation I'd just move.
It's great that you have the freedom and resources to move around the country so easily, but I think that's a fairly rare privilege.
> is no replacement for solving the problem
I don't think I suggested it was. But it's not feasible that the problem will be solved in the next few weeks. For those next few weeks, fear and risk can be minimized with some "extra work".
I maintain a old inefficient boiler for my home. It has a pilot light and stays lit as long as there is service.
It costs me about $250-400 more annually vs an efficient boiler.