Texas could connect its electrical grid to the rest of the country's system without losing its autonomy, according to a former top official for both the state's and the nation's energy regulators.
The main switchyard at Vistra Corp.’s Midlothian power plant. This is where the power produced at this plant is transformed into usable energy., our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
Texas relies on a separate power grid from the two larger national grids and is in most respects not subject to federal regulation. The state can draw a very limited amount of power from out-of-state sources. Wood was the chair of the Texas Public Utility Commission from 1995 to 2001 before becoming the FERC chair for four years. He said the PUC could authorize connecting the state grid to the national system without the Texas Legislature having to pass a law first., each additional gigawatt of transmission capacity connecting the Texas power grid with neighboring states could have saved nearly $1 billion and prevented blackouts in around 200,000 Texas homes during Winter Storm Uri last year.
“Wouldn’t there be an opportunity for us when anybody else has problems to make money off of that and then to hedge against problems ourselves by getting power from other people, which would only be possible if we were connected?” Smith asked.Lake said the improvements that Texas implemented to its grid during last year’s legislative sessions would not have been as quickly adopted or scalable if it had been working with the federal grid.
Wood’s assertion that Texas would maintain autonomy over its grid if it connected to the national network contrasts with other comments from state officials who have suggested the opposite, including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.published on the tail end of last year’s winter storm on the website of U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that the state’s denizens would prefer a prolonged blackout over federal regulators requiring changes to the system.
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