[jarpadat]

I’m affected and have been stress-reading every report ever about this since it began.

The short version is, to a first approximation power generation requires power first. For many of the same reasons your house with solar panels is itself on the grid - your one source is not a reliable way to operate all the equipment on your home.

Another issue is that on a grid everything has to run on similar clock. The process of aligning the clock frequency takes time and you have to do it for every node.

There are special plans to “black start” a power grid but if you didn’t prepare adequately for cold which happens every decade, you definitely didn’t plan adequately for black start which happens theoretically never.

[rhodozelia]

"black start" of a power plant, the ability for it to start the generator rotation, provide current to the field, and energize a power line is something that costs more to provide when building a plant. Utilities that have old school focus on reliability will generally have that capability. Private companies who just generate power to make money don't have any incentive to pay for that function. If the grid is dead there is nobody to use that power.

Another cool thing that utility power plants can do is feed themselves - keep the pumps running, lights on, heaters running, coffee hot, etc in the power plant using the power from the generator in the plant even if it is not connected to the transmission system. Most privately owned power plants forego this ability along with black start and will have a diesel generator instead.