NOTHING TO SEE, HERE..............
..........QUICK—lookit Trump’s hair.........and bad attitude.....ann I heer he’s NOT ‘conservative’ enough!
*** As the only state with a self-contained grid, Texas finds itself in a remarkable position to protect the nation by protecting itself. ***
ERCOT is strictly within Texas and does not cross state lines, thus avoiding some federal interstate regulations.
I don’t believe ERCOT has any connections to out of state grids. If it did, it would have to be through a High Voltage DC system because the phase angles of the electricity are different.
One of the other benefits of the Texas grid - they have spare capacity equal to the capacity of its nuclear power plants in the form of natural gas turbines.
LOTS of backup capacity except for the one time where the water intakes to the Comanche Peak plants froze over plus record gas consumption.
The side benefit of all these renewables that they are building is that they are building as much backup capacity from natural gas power production. (That’s why renewable implementation is so expensive - you essentially pay for twice as much power production capacity but don’t use it all)
This means the Texas grid not only has independence but a lot of slack if they shut off the irregular renewables and rely on the naturally produced nuclear and gas.
Alaska and Hawaii both have self contained grids.
Not a single transistor or circuit board worked after the 1921 event. /s
I seem to recall rolling black outs on Texas a few years ago during a cold snap. The weather system idled many of the windmills which provide a significant portion of electric power in Texas and two fossil fuel plants were down for maintenance. The cold conditions increased demand for electricity and there was no backup capacity available. Texas power authorities were even begging Mexico for electricity.