The United States has been dealing with the impacts of a polar vortex that brought Texas, in particular, to its knees. Wind turbines there froze up, and natural gas infrastructure, built more to handle temperatures in the 40 C range, lacks the insulation to deal with severe cold, resulting in freeze-ups that have reduced gas flow for both heating and power generation in the most energy-rich state in that nation. Over the past few weeks, Saskatchewan has endured its own cold snap, but this is par for the course for SaskPower. The Crown utility has a total system power generation capacity of 4,893 megawatts, if everything is running at 100 per cent. On Feb. 11, it was producing a peak of 3,722 megawatts.