Texas and the Failure of Electrical Independence

18 billion dollars in damage. 69 people dead. All because Texas took the “Lone” part of being the Lone Star State a bit too seriously. Well, at least when it came to its electrical grid. But, why, and how? In theory, there shouldn’t really be anything wrong with a particular state opting out of an established electrical connection with other states and instead choosing to have its own grid. So why then did Texas’ decision to cause nearly two days straight of blackouts for many of its residents?

Of course, firstly, it’s crucial to understand how exactly electrical grids work. Essentially, in the lower 48 states of the U.S., there are three separate grids at the highest level, referred to as “interconnections”. These are the Western, Texas, and Eastern Interconnections. While there are some portions of Texas belonging to the Western and Eastern Interconnections, a majority of the state, including the cities of Austin, Houston, and Dallas, is connected to its own grid. Each separate grid is made up of connected power plants, lines, and transformers developing and transporting electrical current from natural gas, oil, coal, nuclear, etc.

But one major thing that separates each interconnection is the regulations power companies are subject to within them. Because while both the Eastern and Western Interconnections contain a variety of environments and must therefore have almost universal protection for all of their electrical infrastructure, Texas is a southern state and hasn’t experienced temperatures much below freezing in over two decades. As a result, not much regulation has been passed regarding the winterizing of equipment in the state. And it’s easy to blame one energy sector for the resulting failure of most of the power plants in the state, as many conservative talk show hosts did, but in reality, virtually every source was impacted harshly. Wind turbines froze, failing to spin with the breeze and natural gas became trapped in pipes, unable to be pumped into the plants themselves.

Now that’s a major issue, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as bad had it not been for the actual fact that Texas was independent of the other interconnections because this meant that power could not be easily redirected from other states unaffected by the unexpected winter storm. Take power outages here in Atlanta for example. They happen frequently enough to prove incredibly annoying but generally don’t last more than 12-18 hours for most people. Plus, a complete failure of the grid could be somewhat eased by surplus power from states such as South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama. Compare that to Texas’ situation, in which the state was reportedly mere minutes away from a total electrical failure that would have left blackouts up for weeks on end.

Interestingly, Texas isn’t even the only state on the continent with such a set of circumstances, as the Canadian province of Quebec is also on its own electrical grid, separate from the aforementioned Eastern and Western Interconnections that the rest of Canada belongs to. Luckily, however, they are yet to experience a similar major issue as Texas did.

In the aftermath of the major winter storm and the ensuing Texas blackouts, many new proposals have been made to address the issues listed above, such as mandating the winterizing of the electrical grid, reducing greenhouse emissions to slow climate change (which many point to as the main cause of the destructive winter storm itself), and even abandoning wind power in the state. So, coincidentally, we have run into the age-old question of medicine. Should we go after the symptoms of the issue (in this case, lackluster regulation and the inability to receive electrical support from neighbors) or the problem itself, Texas’ electrical independence?