[boringg]

Connecting your grid to other markets for the premise of cheaper energy also puts you in a situation where you no longer control your own destiny. My expectation is that the presumed gains of some cheaper power don't balance the risk on reliability and control.

I don't necessarily buy the argument but I am fairly certain that a big chunk of it.

[felbane]

As someone who very nearly lost a family member due to the state's complete inability to implement and enforce preparedness regulations, and due to ERCOT's herculean effort to do just barely not enough to keep the grid online... respectfully, fuck that argument.

We live in a time where functional electric service is a necessity for life. We also live in a time where extreme weather patterns are getting more frequent and more intense.

The very least Texas could do is implement the equipment and procedures necessary to enable importing power from the national grid in an emergency. The cost to implement interconnects at key locations is infinitesimal compared to the costs incurred when there are systemic outages.

The "we can do it better ourselves" argument only works when you don't repeatedly catastrophically fail at "doing it better."

[boringg]

You should also remember that actually having a more connected grid makes it susceptible to reliability issues as well. If you look back to 1999 when the entire northeast electrical grid was crippled for a couple weeks as a function of that connectivity.

I'm not letting Texas off the hook -- not winterizing your natural gas pipelines and trying to blame renewables for the grid catastrophically failing is definitely a regulators issue and a return a much money as possible to the investor shareholders without concern to the citizens is the key feature of their system.

[Rastonbury]

Forgive my ignorance but doesn't connecting to other grid allow them to buy energy when prices are low and still allow them to generate their own when the national grid prices are high? It would also allow them to sell excess no?

[nothercastle]

It does but it appears the market unit for a block of energy does not match well with what is actually needed. So you might need 1-2 hours worth of extra power to hit peak demand but you have to buy 6 and dump the 4.

[boringg]

Depends on the needs of the market and their own generating supply. Arbitrage opportunities would surely exist in the short run while long run pushes the price to a natural equilibrium.