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Two things as a Texan, first off there was no petrol available during the freeze and blackouts the pumps at the stations all require electricity to pump and all the stations in the area were black too so no petrol was pumped not a single station had back up gennys to run the pumps in a ten mile radius of my location.

Second my solar panels on my roof kept my home lit up and 80 degrees plus for the duration of the power blackouts which for my location was 12 hours, 36 hours then 8 more. The panels have hydrophobic coatings the snow never stuck it slide off the 35 degree incline. My 15kw system makes so much power per day it normally spins my meter backwards every day there is sun even the shortest day of the year Dec 21 has over ten hours of daylight at my latitude. We get 220+ days of full sun as verified not only by my panel tracking app but NOAA.gov 30 year climate data. My panels make 180 kWh or more PER DAY 220+ days a year. A full sized model S tesla goes 4 miles on a single kWh gross from the plug. My home in August at 68 degrees with dual HVAC units roaring only uses 80kWh per day so at peak sun in August I’m selling back to ercot over 100kWh per day. That’s also enough to send a model S 400 miles PER DAY it’s like having a gas pump on my roof that gives me 400 miles PER DAY of range 220 plus days per year.

Flat out you are wrong.

While everyone else was cold and dark one as warm watching Netflix with hot food and cold beers. So much so my neighbors saw my lights on and came over to warm up get some BBQ and have some beers out the beer fridges in the second garage. Had I owned a tesla I could have filled my battery pack to the top every day but one of the storm when we overcast over. Modern panels still make a percentage of their rated power even under full overcast. Mine make 10 to 25% under varying levels of overcast. For the full overcast day the.g. Were making 1600 to 2200 watts for the whole ten plus hours of day light. More than enough to run my led lights, freezers and fridges all 7 of them plus the blower for the back up gas fired heater. I used my genrac only at night to keep the heat going and for only two hours a night for three nights it’s trifueled natural gas line primary, propane back up tank with 500 gal in it and petrol out of the tank that I can manually fill if needed as a last resort. The gas grid never dropped below 7” of water down from it’s normal 11” but still enough to run the 10,000 watt genrac and my gas heater core. The black out was for poors the upper class all have genracs and or solar panels. My neighbors were so impressed with my panel setup three of them bought into a set and I had my crews install them. What started as a off grid prepper project for me turned into some side money jobs and now my neighbors all have back up power and the ability to sell power to the grid at peaker rates their panels will be paid off in under 5 years, have a capacity life warranty for 25, are hail rated to baseball size and fully covered under home owner insurance with a roof depreciation discount for the area they cover. My panels survived baseball sized hail in April 2019 everywhere the roof was not covered with panels was damaged and replaced not a single panel went off line after the storm and it’s 2021 so I’m sure they survived at their rated hail size. I couldn’t be happier with my panels they paid for themselves in 4.25 years and have been sending me mail box money ever since. My next vehicle will be a Model S and it will charge for free from my roof for a decade or more.