What Happens to Texas Homes During a Power Outage? (And How to Prepare)

The AC stops. That's the first thing you notice in Texas, because it's almost always the first thing that matters. In July, your house starts absorbing heat immediately. In February, the opposite.

Your smart home goes dark. The Nest thermostat shows nothing. The Ring doorbell is offline. Alexa can't tell you what's happening because Alexa doesn't know, either.

Your security system switches to its battery backup. It'll last 4-24 hours depending on the system and how old the backup battery is. Most people haven't checked that battery since the installer put it in.

The fridge is still cold inside. It'll hold temperature for a while as long as you keep the door shut. The freezer is fine too — a full freezer keeps food safe for about 48 hours. A half-full freezer, 24 hours.

You check your phone. Maybe CenterPoint or Oncor's outage map. Maybe Twitter. Maybe the ERCOT dashboard if you're the kind of person who checks the ERCOT dashboard. The status says "event in progress" or "crew dispatched" or some equally vague non-answer. You text your neighbors: "You out too?"

At this point, it's still an inconvenience. A story for the group chat. Not yet a problem.

The food safety clock is now ticking. The FDA says your refrigerator is safe for 4 hours with the door closed. Most people open it at least twice in the first hour. So call it 3 hours, realistically.

Phone batteries are draining. Everyone in the house is using their phone more than usual — checking outage updates, texting, scrolling. The kids are watching downloaded shows. Your phone was at 65% when the power went out, and it's at 30% now. The portable charger is... somewhere.

The house temperature is moving. In summer, it climbs about 1-2 degrees per hour depending on insulation, shade, and how many times the kids open the back door. A house that was 73 degrees at the outage is now 78-80. Uncomfortable but not dangerous. Yet.

In winter, it drops faster. A well-insulated Texas home loses about 2-3 degrees per hour in freezing conditions. That 72-degree living room is now 64. You grab a blanket. Still fine.

The WiFi router has been dead since the power went out. The kids are now asking when it's coming back with increasing urgency, as if you control the electrical grid. Working from home is not an option unless you've got a mobile hotspot and a laptop with charge.

Now it's a problem.

Medications. Insulin needs refrigeration. Certain biologics need refrigeration. If someone in your household depends on temperature-sensitive medication, the 4-hour fridge window just closed. You're now packing meds into a cooler with whatever ice you can scavenge from the freezer.

Elderly family members. Heat-related illness starts becoming a concern for older adults when indoor temps hit 85+ degrees. In a Texas summer, that's 6-8 hours without AC. Hypothermia becomes a concern when indoor temps drop below 60 in winter. For an elderly person with circulation issues, that threshold is higher.

Work disruption. If you work from home — and millions of Texans do post-2020 — you've now missed half a day or more. Meetings missed, deadlines pushed, clients left hanging. If you're hourly, that's directly lost income. If you're salaried, it's a different kind of stress.

Pets. Dogs and cats handle temperature swings better than humans, but not indefinitely. Brachycephalic breeds (bulldogs, pugs, Persian cats) are heat-sensitive. Fish tanks lose temperature regulation. Reptile enclosures go cold. Aquariums can crash.

The hotel question. Someone in the household — probably the most practical one — starts looking at hotel availability. The Holiday Inn Express has rooms. It's $189/night. You start doing mental math on how long this outage might last versus how much you're willing to sweat.

This is where outages go from inconvenient to financially painful.

Pipe freeze risk. In winter, when the inside of your house drops below 55 degrees, pipes in exterior walls and attics start approaching freeze territory. Texas homes aren't built for extended cold — insulation is designed to keep heat out, not in. Pipes run through attics because it's cheaper to build that way and usually doesn't matter. Until it does. A single burst pipe costs $5,000-$15,000+ in water damage, drywall repair, and remediation.

Food loss. By hour 12, your fridge contents are done. The freezer is starting to thaw. You're looking at $200-$500 in spoiled groceries depending on how recently you stocked up. The Costco run you did yesterday? Painful.

Hotel costs. A family of four in a hotel for two nights runs $300-$600 in DFW or Houston, more during a widespread outage when demand spikes. During Uri, hotel rooms in Austin that weren't also blacked out were going for $300-$400/night.

Lost productivity. A full day of lost work is hard to quantify, but it's real. Freelancers and small business owners feel it most directly. For a household with two working adults, a two-day outage could mean $500-$1,500 in lost productivity or used PTO.

Add it up: one bad 24-48 hour outage can cost a Texas household $2,000 to $15,000+. That's not hypothetical. That's what thousands of families spent during Uri — and that was before accounting for the people who had burst pipes and spent $20,000+ on remediation.

Other states have power outages. Trees fall on lines in Georgia. Ice storms hit the Midwest. But Texas has a structural vulnerability that no other state (except Hawaii) shares: ERCOT is an island.

The Texas electrical grid — managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas — is deliberately isolated from the rest of the United States. The Eastern Interconnection covers everything from the Rockies to the Atlantic. The Western Interconnection covers the Pacific states and mountain west. And then there's Texas, doing its own thing since the 1930s.

Every other state can borrow power from its neighbors during an emergency. Oklahoma has extra capacity? It flows to Kansas. California needs help? Arizona and Nevada send juice. The interconnections are giant mutual aid agreements built into the physics of the grid.

Texas can't do that. When demand spikes and supply drops, there's nowhere to import power from. ERCOT has to balance supply and demand entirely within Texas. When that balance tips — and it has tipped multiple times — the only option is to cut load. That means your lights go off.

Winter Storm Uri proved the worst case: 4.5 million homes lost power. 246 people died. Estimated damage: $295 billion. The grid came within 4 minutes of a total collapse that could have meant weeks or months of restoration.

And summer is getting worse, not better. Record demand in 2023 and 2024. Data centers, EV charging, Bitcoin mining, and AI facilities are all adding load. ERCOT has over 164,000 MW of new interconnection requests — they can't build generation that fast.

Let's do the math on one bad outage — not the worst case, just a bad one. A 36-hour summer outage affecting a family of four in a typical 3,000 sq ft Texas home:

• Food loss: $300
• Hotel for 1-2 nights: $200-$400
• Lost work productivity: $300-$500
• Emergency supplies (ice, coolers, batteries): $50-$100
• Eating out (no way to cook): $100-$150

Total for a "not that bad" outage: $950-$1,450.

Now the bad scenario — a winter storm with pipe damage:

• Everything above: $950-$1,450
• Burst pipe repair and water damage: $5,000-$15,000
• Temporary housing during repairs: $2,000-$5,000

Total for a bad winter outage: $8,000-$21,000.

A standby generator costs $8,000-$15,000. Once. And it lasts 20-30 years. A battery backup costs $10,000-$35,000 with zero maintenance. One bad outage can cost as much as the backup system itself. Two bad outages and you've paid for it twice over. The math is hard to argue with.

Not everyone's in the same place financially. Here are the options from least to most investment:

• Portable generator: $500-$2,000. Limited power (3,000-7,500 watts). Won't run your AC. Requires gasoline, which runs out and is hard to get during widespread outages. You have to set it up manually, run extension cords, and manage it the entire outage. It's loud. It produces carbon monoxide, so it must stay outside. It's a tool, not a solution. But it's better than nothing.
• Standby generator: $8,000-$15,000 installed. Automatic. Starts itself in 10-30 seconds. Powers your whole home. Runs on natural gas (indefinitely) or propane. Annual maintenance required. This is the workhorse option that most Texas homeowners choose. Full cost breakdown here.
• Battery backup: $10,000-$35,000 installed. Silent. Instant switchover. Zero maintenance. Limited runtime (8-24 hours depending on capacity and load). Best with solar panels for recharging during extended outages. Powerwall vs generator comparison here.
• Hybrid system: $18,000-$60,000 installed. Battery for instant, silent switchover. Generator for indefinite runtime. The complete package. Increasingly popular for homes valued at $400K+. The "I don't want to think about it, just make the power work" option.

They wait.

They read this article. They nod along. They think "yeah, I should probably do something about that." And then they don't. Because the power is on right now, and it's hard to spend $10,000+ solving a problem you're not currently experiencing.

Then the next storm hits. The power goes out. And everyone calls at once.

Here's what happens after every major Texas outage event: installers are booked 3-6 months out within 48 hours. Prices jump 15-25% because demand is through the roof and supply chain tightens. Equipment that was in stock last week is backordered for 8-12 weeks. The people who planned ahead are watching TV while their neighbors are packing coolers and checking hotel availability.

The best time to install backup power was before the last outage. The second best time is right now — before the next one. Spring and early fall are ideal: installers have availability, equipment is in stock, and you're not competing with 50,000 other homeowners who all had the same idea at the same time.

Get a free assessment while you're thinking about it. It takes 5 minutes, costs nothing, and puts you ahead of the people who'll be scrambling after the next ERCOT conservation alert.