When I wrote that many states connected to the U.S. energy grid charge lower rates than Texas, there were a lot of questions about our grid system, so I’m going to clarify what it is and how it relates to Texas’ catastrophic failure to provide adequate energy for its people and businesses. First things first. The U.S. Department of Energy is in charge of “overseeing the United States’ energy supply.” The Department of Energy has an Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. This office is responsible for ensuring that “the nation’s critical energy infrastructure is able to recover rapidly from disruptions.” They focus on grid development.
THE GRID
U.S. energy is supplied by a “complex machine” that generates electricity and transports it “through a system of substations, transformers and transmission lines that deliver the product” to consumers. “The combined transmission and distribution network is known as the “power grid” or simply ‘the grid.’” The U.S. grid has three major interconnections: Eastern, Western, and ERCOT (about 90% of Texas). Interconnections are zones. The utility companies in an Interconnection zone “are electrically tied together during normal system conditions. Each interconnection operates independently of one another with the exception of a few direct current (DC) conversion links in between.”
U.S. GRID COMPARED TO FOREIGN GRIDS
This is what caused the most confusion when I wrote about electricity rates. There is only one U.S. energy grid, but it has subsections called interconnections. The interconnections extend to Canada and Mexico, but the areas that extend across the border are ruled by foreign laws. The areas within our border are ruled by U.S. laws and the areas ruled by U.S. laws are what is called the U.S. energy grid. The Texas problem is about laws, because laws are why Texas lost power and its residents were asked to pay astronomical energy bills. If they had different laws to require that they be connected to the Eastern or Western interconnections they could have gotten much more energy and avoided a lot of pain.
WHY BALANCE IS NECESSARY
Electricity travels on power lines. There has to be a balance between supply of electricity and demand for electricity or the transmission of energy from one place to another is destroyed.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration balancing authorities ensure “that a sufficient supply of electricity is available to serve expected demand, which includes managing transfers of electricity with other balancing authorities.” The main image for this essay shows the balancing authorities of the grid.
The Eastern Interconnection has 36 balancing authorities and the Western Interconnection has 37 balancing authorities, but the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has only one. Therefore, the Eastern and Western Interconnections can get extra energy from many sources, but ERCOT is stranded for the most part with few places to go to get more energy during an emergency. Last Monday they got “warning signs that massive amounts of energy supply was dropping off the grid… As supply dwindled and demand grew, the margin narrowed to more and more dangerous levels, forcing grid operators to enact emergency protocols to either increase supply or decrease demand.”
They have only “limited” connections to the Eastern Interconnection and Mexico, so they couldn’t get enough energy from those sources. They tried shutting off energy from big industry, but that didn’t provide enough energy to achieve balance. So, that’s why they started taking away energy from small consumers. Bernadette Johnson, senior vice president of power and renewables at Enverus, said it was necessary for ERCOT to shut off power to consumers because the system has to “balance constantly,” and if it doesn’t balance then it goes offline, breaks down completely, and the damage might take months to repair.
So, we see how being isolated from the Eastern and Western Interconnections significantly weakens Texas’ ability to provide energy to residents and businesses. The government isolated Texas not because of lofty ideals of independence but to enable Texas energy suppliers to avoid paying for federal regulations and allow them to charge high prices during emergencies at the expense of every other business and citizens. The GOP politicians pretend being isolated makes energy more affordable, but many other states who joined the Eastern or Western Interconnections have lower rates! Republicans accuse Democrats of choosing winners and losers, but Republicans are choosing energy companies to be the winners and everybody else and every other business to be the losers; and maybe this tragedy is going to make some GOP politicians losers at the ballot box in 2 years.