[seanmcdirmid]

American regional grids aren’t strongly connected, you aren’t getting much electricity between America west (eg Washington state) and the mountain west grid (eg utah). There is one big connection between a coal plant in Utah and LA, everything else is just connected by lines with very small capacity. If the west coast somehow tripped…we have better chance of getting help from BC than Wyoming or Utah.

[defrost]

Fair comment, my apologies if I conveyed that they were.

There's enough weak connection to accomadate some slosh that helps to smooth things and enough long connections to have potential issues in geomagnetic storms - although these should be well and truly mitigated by now.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm

^ Québec, but interconnected with NE USofA.

[seanmcdirmid]

I just wanted to point out that while Texas is completely disconnected, the regional grids are still only partially connected, but I guess this is only relevant for the west where areas of sparse population densities make strong connections very difficult. This is relevant when someone complains about EVs on the west coast using coal powered electricity rather than hydro and renewables that makes up much of the west coast's energy mix. Technically kind of true since Utah is connected via socal (they are changing this to a renewable link though), but not really since the other connections are pretty small.