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So far the Texas power grid is handling the severe cold snap, even though power usage in the state on Thursday was slightly higher than expected. The chairman of the Public Utility Commission declared on Wednesday that the grid was "ready and reliable" ahead of the arctic blast. No widespread outages have resulted, and the live dashboard on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas web site shows supply well ahead of demand by several thousand megawatts. ERCOT projects the state's peak power demand will be on Friday morning.