February 24 2021 Kurt Miller is executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, a not-for-profit organization that advocates hydropower for a better Northwest. The hundreds of thousands of Oregonians who spent days without electricity, due to the recent ice storm, learned firsthand that power outages represent something more than an inconvenience. If you lose power during a period of extreme cold or heat, lives can be at risk. It's one thing to know that downed trees are causing you and your neighbors to be without electricity and that local utility crews are working 24/7 to restore it. But, imagine the millions of people in Texas who had their power purposely shut off by the state's grid operator.