Texplainer: Why Does Texas Have Its Own Power Grid?
Hey, Texplainer: Why does Texas have its own electric grid?
Texas' secessionist inclinations do have 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 territories and ...
Comments (3)
Stuart Greenfield
good explanation, thanks
Gritsforbreakfast
IMO the best Texplainer yet. Some of the others didn't really need to be Texplained, but I've wondered about this for years. :)
Neil Sapper
I hope the Texplainer will follow up with a report on _how_ Lubbock and Amarillo (and the rest of the Texas Panhandle) remained outside the ERCOT grid. As a former longtime resident of the Panhandle (37 years), I suspect that the dominant utility in that region (formerly Southwestern Public Service) had expanded its service area into eastern New Mexico with generating plants in NM and was thus a grid unto itself. When ERCOT was created, Southwestern Public Service successfully protected its NM-holdings. In any event, the story about the Panhandle and ERCOT would tell us more about ERCOT. Thanks for your good work.