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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Texas would have to cede regulatory authority to FERC, and it’s likely those in power would rather power consumers suffer than give up regulatory authority. The only solution long term is regime change.

> ERCOT is largely independent of FERC and federal regulation because it does not engage in significant interstate trading — it operates under its own system islanded off from the eastern and western interconnections. Glick during last week’s open meeting questioned whether this structure was still appropriate, and called on Congress and the state’s legislature to potentially “rethink” that approach.

> “Does it really makes sense to isolate yourself and limit your ability to get power from neighboring regions, just to keep FERC at bay?” Glick said. “That strikes me as the proverbial cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ferc-electric-reliability-p...

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It would not need to cede any authority. The Texas grid already has interconnects with the East, West, and Mexico grids at four different interconnections, and imports/exports electricity through them continuously, while still having its own regulatory authority. The person you are replying to is suggesting to increase the capacity of these interconnects.

There was/is a plan to create a large hub for sharing up to 30 GW of electricity between the East, West, and Texas grids, but unfortunately it was scaled back significantly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation

So if they’re not going to increase interconnector capacity, nor add interconnectors, sounds like their power grid will simply remain brittle. That’s a very Texas position to take.

This is a no-go politically, since tge entire reason ERCOT exists was because of bad experiences for Texas with tying into the surrounding regional grids where issues in other states would spill over and adversely effect Texas.

I can't blame Texas for coming to the decision that it's better to implement one's own isolated grid so that mist problems are self-contained to that, and there is a bit more freedom to experiment.

That freedom comes with tradeoffs, and Texas has only itself to blame. I find it amusing because for the most part it's always out of staters that get out of shape out about it.

I can say, I can count on my fingers and toes the number of brown /blackout out periods in the past couple years we've had in Texas, qnd trace those failures to somewher in State. My mom back in VA however gets to deal with several hour irregular blackouts with no explanation whatsoever. There were two or three just in the time I was back there visiting.

Oveeall, it seems to me like the peaks may be more troublesome to Texas, but the overall consumption does seem to have fewer hiccups involved, and for somewhere where AC is a must, I'm pretty okay with that.

As long as they effing winterize. Winter a year or do ago was a boondoggle of epic proportions, and ERCOT's and PUC's leadership was as damn close to beng transparebtly corrupt as I've ever seen.

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