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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I don’t even know where to start. How about the low hanging fruit. What “federal network” are you talking about? Do you think there is a federal power grid?

Also: Texas leads the country in renewables generation: https://www.kxan.com/weather-traffic-qas/texas-leads-the-cou... (“ Texas more than doubled what California produced in renewable energy last calendar year. The gap will only widen in the next few years as our state looks for continued increases in solar power harnessing.”)

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While the specific choice of the word "federal' might be incorrect, I think it is likely you know what the poster means. It seems as though you are attempting to discredit the poster using an insult, rather than facts. This is not only lazy but degrades the quality of the conversation for everyone else.

"The Texas Interconnection is maintained as a separate grid for political, rather than technical reasons, but can also draw some power from other grids using DC ties. By not crossing state lines, the synchronous power grid is in most respects not subject to federal (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) regulation."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection#:~:tex....

I'm puzzled how you single out the parent's tone and don't react to the GP's stance in saying it's "fitting" that Texas (not ERCOT) and its citizens are suffering worse under climate change. That's constructive for discussion? ^^

The GP claimed ERCOT was formed to pollute and avoid FERC jurisdiction. Where is that supported? It's hard to argue that reason when ERCOT was formed pre-renewables.

Separately, the GP said "ERCOT and fossil = bad, renewables = good", and yet as the parent pointed out, ERCOT is a leader in renewables production. Frankly, their permitting has allowed more renewables penetration v. FERC meddling in other markets. [0] We'll see if the recent FERC reforms help renewables.

[0] https://www.eenews.net/articles/fight-over-ferc-grid-order-c...

If you don’t know the terminology you probably don’t know that pollution is EPA’s jurisdiction, not FERC’s.

Texas operates its own independent electrical grid (presumably to avoid federal energy regulations, though I'm not sure)[1], whereas the rest of America operates roughly on two interstate grid regions. I would agree that it's ignorant to claim Texas is doing nothing against climate change though.

[1]: https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/us-grid-regions

The terminology is perhaps not exactly correct because the "grids" one would expect Texas to cooperate with are either the Eastern or the Western - but it does make a fair degree of sense. It's pretty open that Texas's reason for operating their own interconnection is to avoid federal regulation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. By operating an electrical interconnect that is mostly confined by the Texas state borders, they create a strong argument that there is no interstate commerce, thus avoiding any federal oversight.

Renewable energy construction is proceeding rapidly in Texas because events have shown that the Texas interconnect lacks sufficient capacity or interconnection to reliably meet Texas's electrical demand. There is definitely a climate advantage, but it's important to understand that renewables are increasingly the cheapest option in the southwestern United States where land (the main resource wind and solar consume) is inexpensive, insolation is high, and the landscape is often amenable to wind production. The problem remains acute and the Texas legislature recently approved a ten-plus billion dollar program to construct new gas power plants to help address the need. It's more of an all-out scramble than a climate change strategy.

This situation is mostly self-made. Texas has not been a very attractive market to build generation in because the lack of interconnection makes it difficult to achieve good utilization over the full year. Texas has repeatedly backed out of efforts that would improve connectivity between Texas and the Eastern and Western through rectifier-inverter systems, for example the Tres Amigas Superstation, largely over political concerns about interstate commerce. The Texas power crisis is long brewing but didn't really achieve political visibility until the last few years.

Is the argument that a self-contained grid means no interstate commerce really that strong? With this Supreme Court, OK, fine, maybe trying to look at precedent is a sucker’s game, but I would have thought Wickard v. Fillburn would have put an end to that argument 80 years ago.

Of course, if the relevant statutes only apply to transmission across state lines, then maybe that’s the answer (I recall that’s how Southwest was able to start with an unregulated route system by flying only between Texas cities at first) but if not, I would think that regulators could establish a jurisdiction basis over 80 GW of electrical generation.

It’s questionable whether Wickard is still good law. But more importantly, the Federal Power Act is specifically addressed to interstate and wholesale electric sales. That’s why FERC doesn’t have jurisdiction over ERCOT.

Note that electric generators in Texas certainly are subject to EPA regulation, which also rests on the Commerce Power. Pollution produced by Texas plants does travel interstate, even if sales of wholesale electricity do not.

But for the same reason, the complaint about ERCOT being a way to bypass federal pollution regulation is nonsensical.

Yes, as I understand it, the long-running political tension between ERCOT and FERC primarily has to do with rate and transmission agreement regulations, not environmental regulation.

That said, FERC actually does have a fairly substantial environmental regulation function in that they handle NEPA matters for electrical initiatives triggered by federal policy. So avoiding FERC regulation may avoid having to complete NEPA process (e.g. EIS) in some cases, but it doesn't help with requirements under Clean Air Act/Clean Water Act, which are typically the more onerous for power plants.

Texas produces around 2.5x as much electricity as California does, so producing double the amount of renewable energy actually suggests they are behind in converting to renewables.

The US average is about 39% of electricity from renewables. Texas is at 33%. California is at 49%. (Best is Vermont at over 99%, South Dakota at 83%, and Washington at 82%).

In terms of CO2 Mt/TWh the US is 402, Texas is slightly worse at 428, California is 229, and the best are Vermont at 5, Washington at 100, New Hampshire at 131, Oregon at 143, and South Dakota at 145.

Note these figures are just electricity generated in state. For Texas that's almost all their electricity. For California around 20-30% of their electricity is imported from other states, including a lot of renewable electricity from Washington and Oregon.

Also different states use a different mix of energy sources. What might be done with electricity in one place might be done with natural gas in another place. If we want to compare states on renewable energy use it is probably more accurate to look at renewables as a percentage of total energy use.

The top three by that metric are Washington at nearly 50%, South Dakota at 43%, and Maine at 38%. California is at 16.5% and Texas is at 8.5%.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...

It seems fair to describe all the other regional ISOs as being connected in a sense (transitively) whereas ERCOT is not. What is your objection?

What's that standard for "connected"?

ERCOT is connected to Mexico's power grid [0] and other non-ERCOT regions [1].

There is no unified "federal network."

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/02/03/ro...

[1] https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/dctieflows#:~:t....

thanks for linking. interestingly, despite producing the most renewable energy as an absolute measure, apparently Texas is 18th out of US states in terms of what percentage used comes from renewable sources at 26%.

Texas consumes a huge amount of power for industrial purposes (oil refineries and chemical plants and the like). It produces a lot of power (including through renewables) but has notably high power consumption due to the industrial base and HVAC requirements.

Texas is unique in that it has the only state-only gird in the USA outside of Alaska and Hawaii. Because the grid is completely in state, it is not regulated by the federal government.

There is actually. North America has 2 or 3 large interconnects that are basically large power grids. Two places are separate: Texas and Quebec. While Quebec has a decent amount of connections to the rest of the continent and is generally well managed, Texas has one inadequate connection. Hence why it goes down at the hint of bad weather

> Also: Texas leads the country in renewables generation:

That's almost like repeating pattern. Germany is also leading in renewable generation and have one of the highest electricity prices in Europe.

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