“You can have the nicest power plant out there, but if you can't get either coal or natural gas [on the generation side], it's just not going to run,” Travis Cooke, a managing director at the Dallas-based energy consulting company Alden Energy, said in an interview.

Another factor will be how long the storm lasts.

While the additional grid capacity and emergency gas supplies have put the grid in a slightly better position than in 2021, the emergency supplies can only last so long, Cooke said — roughly 36 hours in extreme winter conditions.

“Anything less than 36 hours, we should be in good shape,” he said. “But anything longer than that, I think, would be a concern.”