Texplainer: Why Does Texas Have Its Own Power Grid?
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Why does Texas have its own electric grid?
Texas’ secessionist inclinations have at least one modern outlet: the electric grid. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection — and Texas.
The Texas grid is called ERCOT, and it is run by an agency of the same name — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT does not actually cover all of Texas. El Paso is on another grid, as is the upper Panhandle and a chunk of East Texas. This presumably has to do with the history of various utilities’ service ter… Continue Reading (3 minute read)
The rest of the US (and Canada) actually has two grids – one covering (most of) New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, (most of) Montana, Alberta, a scoonch of South Dakota, and everything west of that (so, also Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, California, Oregon, and Washington), and one covering, uh, everything else. Quebec is also mostly its own thing.
It should be noted that all of these networks, including Texas, actually *are* physically connected to each other, just with very limited capacity.
I’m working with ERCOT and nearly 30 wind turbine farms to keep them generating. I’m sleeping on the floor of this office to try and help. This is the best use of my time until the grid stabilizes.
Alaska and Hawaii: am I a joke to you?
Should have listened to Hank Hill and invested in Propane and Propane Accessories
Yep, and they’re having rolling blackouts today across the state because the grid can’t handle the demand.
Ok folks, think about this. Up north, the people experience extreme cold every year. Their homes are insulated for it. The grid and power plants are sized accordingly.
In TX, many homes have heat pumps with backup electric strip heat. For most systems, this secondary system on kicks on when temps approach freezing.
However, when we have extreme cold and our homes are not insulated as well as up north, there is a lot of strip heating running at one time, much more than normal. This is on top of the heat pump running, which is the a/c system running in reverse.
Strip heating is good ol’ resistance heat, like the electric stove. Lots of energy is required.
This, coupled with lots of wind turbines down from the freezing rain, solar panels only working in the day (and at work, ours is covered with snow), and some issues with some of the gas fired plants, we are where we are. We need more firm power generation for backup.
Is that why they’re having blackouts during a cold snap?
Texas has always existed in a state of “half american”, im not surprised. If it were up to them. They would be their own country, several times by now in fact.
It also has a “Stock Market” for electricity. You can buy\\sell electricity “stocks” and make or lose money depending on how smart you are.
DFW here and we are going on 8+ hrs no power.