the state vulnerable to winter-storm blackouts, including the major disaster that occurred ten years later in February 2021. 2021 winter storm power losses During a major cold-weather event in mid-February 2021, ERCOT declared a statewide emergency, due to a 34,000 MW shortfall in generation that caused widespread blackouts. At 1:25 a.m. on February 15, ERCOT began requesting blackouts from service providers. On February 16, electricity shortages caused the price of electricity to spike to over $9,000 per megawatt-hour (MWh), whereas the week before, the lowest price of power had been less than $30 a MWh. Some retail electricity providers were possibly facing huge losses or bankruptcy, and customers of Griddy reported receiving absurdly high electric bills. Approximately 4 million customers in Texas were without electricity for various times during the multi-day storm. At first, rotating outages lasting from 10 to 40 minutes were imposed on millions of customers, but those outages lasted many hours for some and over 48 hours for others, while millions more were spared from any hardship. During the power loss, some Texans were forced to survive in record freezing temperatures down to . On February 16, Governor Greg Abbott declared that ERCOT reform would be an emergency priority for the state legislature, and there would be an investigation of the power outage to determine long-term solutions. A 357-page report had been written after the 2011 power outage in Texas, which seemed to have been ignored, because too many critical generators still lacked appropriate weatherization in 2021, especially the natural gas system. Texans outside the ERCOT-controlled grid had a different power experience. Relatively few electric customers lost power in those regions. In counties around El Paso in western Texas, El Paso Electric reported that, as a result of it having investing millions in cold weather upgrades after the 2011 cold snap, 3,000 customers lost power for less than five minutes. In counties around Beaumont in eastern Texas, Entergy suffered relatively few outages either, because of previous winterization efforts. The first lawsuits against ERCOT grid mismanagement were filed on February 19, 2021. On March 8, 2021, ERCOT began releasing a weekly market notice that includes entities that have paid previously identified short-pay amounts and provides an updated estimate of the aggregate outstanding short-pay amount. On February 16, 2021, it was reported that at least 10 deaths were linked to the 2021 ERCOT grid power outages. By late March,