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I must have not explained the proposal in a manner you could understand - especially since you are so far off in your understanding of what I propose.

Creating two grids does NOT require a doubling of capacity nor does it require double the number of tranmission lines. It does require ISOLATION, so that a fault in one grid does not impact the other grid. Such isolation is acheived by equipment at the substation. At most, all that would be required would be to take the existing number of lines (for example lets say 10) and isolate them into to seperate grids of 5 lines each. Then split the load 50% to each grid.

No change in lines yet. If needed, lines could added as demand required. Lets say that folks were paranoid and decided to add 1 extra line to each grid for a config of 6 + 6. This gives a standard N+1 configuration that is commonly used in fault tolerant designs. The point of two grids is to prevent faults at one grid from impacting the other grid.

I'm very much aware of what is right and wrong about the Texas grid. Would it supprise you to know that Texas utility companies are having to replacing entire power transmission towers in locations? The reason is that the towers are about to fall down. Would it supprise you to know that the SCADA control and transfer trip controls of the grid will loose their commuications paths in less than 18 months? And that the power companies are having to scramble to find alternative means of communications for the vital functions.

Don't cast stones Texas - you are living in a glass house. The PRIMARY advantage that you have over the rest of the grid(s) is that you are smaller in size - which is the very thing I have been advocating.

I understand very well. I have worked for electric utility companies in Ohio, Philadelphia and Houston. That includes working in engineering planing department and modeling transmission lines for short circuit analysis.

True isolation of grids requires both grids to have spinning reserves and standby reserves for generating capacity. Although many large substation already have multiple transmission lines feeding them, the majority of the substation in the United States do not.

The majority of the transmission line corridors do not contain multiple circuits. Although many do exist, there are more miles of single circuit corridors than multiple. The single line corridors would require build-out to do as you suggest.

I do not know what experience you have in protective device coordination and transmission line distance relaying, but what you suggest is a staggering expense with little improvement. Breaking the US into smaller isolated grids without adding redundancy will increase the number of power outages. Unscheduled line failures from tree limbs, vandals and fatigue do happen. When you reduce the ability to reroute power through a large connected grid, you increase the number and duration of outages the customer will see.

I am not surprise that towers get replaced. Steel, even galvanized steel with a sacrificial anode system will see some corrosion. As Houston was the third city in the world to install an electric distribution system, some of it is old.

Some SCADA systems have their communication fail quickly, some are using systems over 40 years old.

The PRIMARY advantage that you have over the rest of the grid(s) is that you are smaller in size - which is the very thing I have been advocating.

No, the primary advantage we have is we build the generation sufficient to carry our load with enough reserve to handle unscheduled combined with planned outages. So far, the NIMBY crowd has not forced us to rely on other to meet our own demands, unlike CA and much of the Northeast.