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We're Texans, and we didn't want the commie rat b*stids in the Federal Govt to be able to tell us how to use electricity. Back when the Constitution meant something, the Feds had no was of telling the states how to handle their electricity other than through the interstate commerce clause. Therefore, when the national grid went up, all the states had to sign off that they wouldn't cut electricity to other states (which explains the collapsing domino effect during power outtages). Also, remember a few years ago when the line was "when people in California turn on a light switch, people in Oregon pay the bill?" California prohibited suppliers from charging what it cost to produce electricity, so they had to up the rates in surrounding states, and could not refuse to supply California.

Some commie rat tried to sneak up and create a single line connection to Oklahoma, which would have put Texas under federal regs, but I believe the gov. threatened to kill the man and sent Texas Rangers out to clear up the mess. This is all off of memory from years ago, but that's the gist of it. Texas isn't under Federal regs because we have our own system, and we have our own system because that's the way we wanted it.

"Is this what Ca. was riled about last year? I didn't understand their complaint but it had something to do with us not sharing at the price they set, I think."

and

"This article leaves out an enormous amount about the historical reasons that Texas in't connected to the Eastern or Western 'grids.'

What are the other historical reasons? "

To answer CindyDawg's question first, when CA was going through its worst crunch, Texas was bulldozing power plants, as they had excess capacity. Of course, the plants we were bulldozing were the oldest, most inefficient, and most polluting (basically because those plants were the least profitable). CA could not understand why we were not hooking up our grid to theirs to that they could vampire the power.

After all, it wasn't Californians that were going to breath the pollution produced by those plants. (Instead, they had to muscle CA power companies to fire up plants in CA that created so much pollution that their owners would be fined.) They though we Texans were terribly selfish to prefer to breath cleaner air instead of giving them power. (Of course, if they allowed the marketplace to work in CA, then at some point that state would have a surplus of plants which would lead to the demolition of old obsolete plants instead of having to nurse them along like Cuban automobiles.)

As far as historical reasons for a Texas-only grid, look at a map of the US. Most of Texas's population and industry is in a triangle defined by Denton, Galveston and San Antonio. (That captures the DFW, Austin, Houston and Waco metropolitan areas.) There really arn't major draws for power north, east and west of that area, except for Amarillo, and Midland-Odessa, and when you get north and west of those cities there is a lotta nothin' and Rocky Mountains. East Texas is mostly rural, as is southern Oklahoma. So geography leads one to a purely Texas grid as things start out.

When you end up, you get a one-state grid as large as most of the interstate grids in the Eastern Interconnection. (I think there are seven regional interconnections that link together to make the Eastern Interconnection.) Of those grids, with the exception of the Florida Grid, which is the smallest, all are interstate.

When it came time to link ERCOT, the Texas grid to the other grids, ERCOT was the only major grid that was purely intrastate, not subject to FERC. And, at that time Texas was flush with energy, so we did not need out of state power. The combination of no need for external power and the penalty of adding federal regulation led Texas to decide that it would be counterproductive to interconnect.

They did not, sparing us the need to ship power from obsolete plants to other parts of the nation too NIMBY or BANANA to allow powerplants locally. I'd say it's a pretty good deal.