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Comment by TMWNN | Hacker News Reader

>As an aside, one of the most stunning proofs of how successful the European Union is happened with the grid. On 8 January 2021, the synchronous area of Continental Europe split into two

The European grid has nothing to do with the EU. The grid includes non-EU countries like Switzerland and Norway. The UK did not leave the grid after Brexit; its interconnections with Ireland and the continent still exist.

The US and Canada's grids are interconnected without the two nations being integrated as closely as the EU member states are.

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ENTSOE-E exists because of the 2009/72/EC directive. It's an EU entity. As with many such, they also allow / work with entities outside of the EU but that doesn't change the fact this is an association existing under and because of the EU legal framework.

The US isn't even integrated with itself.

And sure, other countries can integrate too, and in fact do. Nobody said only EU members are allowed to do it. It is however the largest grid on earth, and therefore a technical and political feat.

US and Canada grids are split east-west, and then there is a third grid restricted entirely to the geographic region of Texas

Texas is connected to Mexico and some other exceptions. The fed though would rather frozen dead Texans than deregulate and allow ERCOT to connect as they do to Mexico. Fed basically holding some of the poorer rural Texans hostage to influence some rich ERCOT bureaucrats to change their regulations -- pretty fucked up IMO.

say what

Texas has made a conscious decision since 1935 when FDR signed the Federal Power Act to stay away because they didn't want the feds to mess with their grid. The feds have no power here because the Texas grid does not cross state lines. When West Texas Utilities did connect through state lines in 1976 (called the Midnight Connection) both HL&P and Texas Electric Service Company immediately disconnected from them to avoid falling under federal regulation. It was not the feds. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/connecting-past-and-...

Yes the federal regulations make demands in order to connect. The feds can release their hostages and drop the federal regulation demands and deregulate and Texas would surely connect to these interstate grids as they did to Mexico.

seeing is believing, until then no one can say that with any certainty

But all of those are connected via HVDC, so aren't they the same grid? Or are you limiting your definition to synchronous grids?

Indeed a sync'd grid is what is typically being called a single grid. HVDC only got the required fast breaker a decade ago so it is nowhere near as widely deployed as the AC system (it's hard to make a HVDC breaker because even if an AC breaker arcs it'll self extinguish in an extremely short period of time as the voltage crosses zero, HVDC never does this so you need something to force the current to zero). Maybe the definition will change over time, it is, after all, completely arbitrary.

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