Podcast delves into Texas storm and blackouts

Some of the best reporting on the catastrophic 2021 Texas blackouts has been on KUT, Austin's NPR station.

Driving the news: "The Disconnect: Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout" podcast kicked off a second season by dropping two new episodes this month.

• The latest episode follows the money in the electric supply chain, explaining who gets paid and how ratepayers will continue to pay for the 2021 blackout for years.
• Earlier episodes cover the lingering trauma from the winter freeze, the big blackout and what state leaders have done in attempts to make amends.

What they're saying: "There is regulation and there's politics — but in Texas, we decided decades ago that market competition, the drive to make a buck, would dictate in large part what gets built on the grid, what doesn't, who sells power, who doesn't, who gets power and who doesn't," KUT reporter and the podcast's host, Mose Buchele, says in his intro for the newest episode.

Go deeper: Last month, the Texas Tribune wrote about the difference between local power outages and rolling blackouts and why that matters.