Deregulation is a terrible idea for life supporting and necessary utilities, power specifically. By deregulating the market, everyone is forced to compete for a finite amount of transmission ability for low profits, each one trying to undercut the other IMO. It completely destabilized the Texas power market. At this point, it may be worth considering putting the Texas power grid into some type of federal receivership.
I think this is just confirmation bias. We have plenty of power outages, some that last longer than this (the 1998 ice storm in Quebec took down the power for weeks). Last year we were out of power for 4 days, again right in the middle of Montreal. It just seems like HN likes to see stories about the Texas power grid, since I don't even remember a story about Montreal's outage last year hitting the front page for long.
I don't think anyone could argue that Quebec has a deregulated power grid, it's the complete opposite in fact. Power generation, distribution, and last mile connections are all nationalized.
I don't know that this event is a great example for your argument.
An entirely different energy market model (MISO/Entergy) was also heavily impacted. The Woodlands, Conroe, et. al. are on a completely different grid. I don't get to pick a "retail electricity provider" and I live 20 minutes from people who can. Doesn't seem to matter.
All markets hit by Beryl are approximately the same degree of screwed, regardless of any specific underlying ideologies.
Texas is a highly urbanized state and a significant number of families don't have the ability to install home solar, so it cannot be viewed as 'minimum requirement' and some other solution is neccesary.
Maybe people could club together and form some form of group which provides that minimum requirement for the whole area. You could perhaps have an equal say in the group, and have a meeting every few years where you elect some people to run the thing on your behalf.
Or the state government could implement a regulatory regime that ensures its citizens have reliable electricity. A feat the other 49 states seem to have mostly accomplished.
In my country the price of roof mount solar is now under €2000 for 10kWp. That includes government subsidies, however they are not that high (€350 per kWp).
Texas is a much richer economy than where I live, so I see no reason why it couldn't be a requirement, at least for single family homes.
I have multiple friends who have had significant damage to their home solar setups this year alone due to hail and high winds in North Texas.
Some who didn't have hail damage are now having difficulty getting other roof damage repaired because in order for their warranty to be valid they need certain people to remove the panels before other roof work can be done. But those people are massively backed up by all the other people needing panels removed/reinstalled/replaced.
A lot of panels are pretty solid these days. For the friends I had in mind its regular roof damage. High winds tearing up the shingles leading to water ingress inside their homes.
