By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules.
Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. The Texas Interconnected System - which for a long time was actually operated by two discrete entities, one for northern Texas and one for southern Texas - had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. These ties, and the accompanying transmission network, grew further during the second world war, when several Texas utilities joined together to form the Texas Interconnected System, which allowed them to link to the big dams along Texas rivers and also send extra electricity to support the ramped-up factories aiding the war effort. Later, particularly during the first world war, utilities began to link themselves together. In the decades after Thomas Edison turned on the country's first power plant in Manhattan in 1882, small generating plants sprouted across Texas, bringing electric light to cities. The separation of the Texas grid from the rest of the country has its origins in the evolution of electric utilities early last century.
RELATED: Photo of lit-up skyline surrounded by homes in the dark sparks outrage on social media This presumably has to do with the history of various utilities' service territories and the remoteness of the non-ERCOT locations (for example the Panhandle is closer to Kansas than to Dallas, notes Kenneth Starcher of the Alternative Energy Institute in Canyon), but Texplainer is still figuring out the particulars on this. El Paso is on another grid, as is the upper Panhandle and a chunk of East Texas. ERCOT does not actually cover all of Texas. The Texas grid is called ERCOT, and it is run by an agency of the same name - the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection - and Texas. That compares with an average of $62 so far this year.Texas' secessionist inclinations have at least one modern outlet: the electric grid. Power prices at the ERCOT North Hub, which includes Dallas, rose to a four-week high of $141 per megawatt hour for Friday from $106 for Thursday. homes on a typical day, but only about 200 homes on a hot summer day in Texas. That would break the grid's all-time high of 74,820 MW set in August 2019.
That compares with a normal high in the city of 91 F for this time of year.Īfter topping the June record on Tuesday when peak demand hit 72,785 megawatts (MW), ERCOT forecast usage would rise to 76,065 MW on Friday and 76,143 MW on Monday. Extreme weather reminds Texans of the 2021 February freeze that left millions without power for days during a deadly storm.ĪccuWeather forecast high temperatures in Houston, the biggest city in Texas, would rise from 98 Fahrenheit (36.7 Celsius) on Friday to 99 F on Saturday and Sunday before sliding to 95 F on Monday.