Electricity prices dramatically increased on Friday in advance of this week's winter storm. It is expected prices in Texas will continue to increase in the face of future winter storms, as occurred last year.

“One year after Greg Abbott allowed our power grid to fail during a severe winter storm, Texans across the state are receiving warnings that they could be left again without power in the dead of winter," Texas gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines told the Lone Star Standard. "This type of dereliction of duty is unacceptable. We must fire Abbott in the Republican primary on March 1st, and when I am Governor I will never allow such a preventable tragedy.”

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which has control of Texas's grid, anticipated that demand would peak on February 4 at a level that has not occurred before in the winter. A similar rise in demand occurred last February before many Texans were left for days without power. Temperatures in Texas this week have declined from the high 60s to the low teens. 

Two-thirds of the state is facing winter storm and weather advisories. At 12:20 p.m. on Thursday, more than 3,000 people in Austin and the West Lake Hills area did not have power. These are among 67,000 total power outages in Texas, according to a report from the Weather Channel. 

Huffines will run against Abbott in the gubernatorial primary on March 1. From 2015 to 2019, he represented Texas' 16th State Senate District, and he is the CEO of Huffines Communities, a real estate development group based in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. 

Abbott is the 48th Governor of Texas and was first elected to the post in 2014. He has prior experience as the longest-standing Attorney General of Texas in history.