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| Fig. 1: Transmission Towers in Texas. (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
While other states in the mainland United States receive electricity from centralized grids under the U.S. government's control, the state of Texas manages and operates its own decentralized, independent power grid. The decision to have an independent grid goes as far back as 1935, when congress instituted its first federal regulation of utilities and Texas electricity companies elected to connect largely only with each other. [1] The decision was further strengthened in the late 1960s when United States government made the move to create two large grids that would serve the country, and again, Texas decided to continue to operate their own grid alone, creating the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to manage the grid's operation. [1]
Today, ERCOT manages 90% of the electricity load for the entire state. [2] The other 10% of electric load in Texas is managed by other utilities including El Paso Electric, Entergy Texas, Southwestern Public Service, and Southwestern Electric Power Company. [3] It is also worth noting that Texas does import a small amount of energy from the Eastern United States and Mexico, respectively 800 MW and 400 MW, but these connections are not synchronous. [4]
While these additional utilities are important to the functioning of the Texas electricity system, ERCOT is by far the most influential and critical to the state because of its immense reach, huge capacity, and extensive integration with Texas' electric system. The ERCOT grid includes more than 650 generation units and more 46,500 miles of transmission lines, illustrated in Fig. 1. [2]
Moreover, ERCOT is an energy-only market, where power plants are paid for the electricity they produce instead of their capacity. [4] While ERCOT operates the electricity grid, the Public Utility Commission (PUC) can set maximum prices that electricity generators must follow. [4] Under this structure, ERCOT supplies electricity for almost the entire state.
One cannot start a conversation regarding the Texas electricity system without first understanding both Texas' annual electricity consumption and production. For Texas to operate its own grid, the state needs to be able to meet its demand with its own internal supply. Because Texas has a population of 28.7 million people and a statewide GDP of $1,802.5 billion, the state requires huge amounts of electricity. [4] In 2020, Texas' consumption of electric power was 424,530 GWh. [5]
In 2020, Texas produced 483,200 GWh of electric power. [5] As seen in Figure 2, natural gas produces more electricity than any other source, and more than half of Texas' electricity production comes from natural gas, which produced 255,600 GWh of electric power in 2020. [5] With this level of production, Texas is able to meet its own demand for electricity.
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| Fig. 2: Texas Electricity Production. [5] Natural gas is the largest source for electricity by far. (Source: H. Schwager) |
While Texas' electricity system does work for the state, Texas' electric power system also has significant downsides, particularly in its unreliability in times of emergency.
Because the grid is almost entirely independent, in the case of grid failure, Texas is unable to import adequate electricity from its neighbors. [4] Typically, the interconnections that exist between states through the federal grid can act as a safeguard against dangerous blackouts in the midst of inclement weather or power failure. [1] Because Texas does not have the ability to import large amounts of synchronous electricity from outside of the state, this can cause major problems when natural disaster hits Texas.
One striking examples of such disadvantages can be seen in the February 2021 winter storm Uri that caused extreme blackouts throughout the state during a winter freeze. Because of the storm and accordant grid failure, more than 10 million Texans lost power, and even worse, this storm resulted in 111 associated deaths. [4] According to a study from the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute, near 60% of respondents endured stress and mental anguish as a result of the outages. [3] Further, this storm caused more than $130 billion in economic losses in just Texas. [4] Storm Uri and the blackouts from this winter freeze drew national attention to ERCOT and Texas' grid as the nation watched the state struggle.
Reasons for the crisis included a lack of connection to other states for support, a failure to properly weatherize the power grid, and a poorly coordinated demand response. [3] Further, Texas had less electricity capacity available when demand spiked with the freezing weather, as ERCOT's peak demand planning prioritizes the hotter, summer months. [4] While proponents of the grid claimed the blackouts had occurred not because of the grid itself but because of human error in management, opponents of the grid pointed to the fact that there would have been less room for such error with a connected, federal grid. Regardless of politics, the blackout exposed serious vulnerability and disadvantages with Texas' electric power grid.
While ERCOT and Texas' independent power grid does have disadvantages, Texas' system is here to stay for the foreseeable future. While this grid does function for the state, Texas must also work to address its grid's failures to ensure both the success of its system and the safety of its citizens.
© Haley Schwager. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] L. Steffy, "Texas's Independence Didn't Cause the Power Crisis," Texas Monthly (2021).
[2] J. Matevosyan et al., "Operational Security: The Case of Texas," IEEE Power Energy Mag. 19, 18 (2021).
[3] T. Kemabota, "Grid Resilience Analysis and Planning of Electric Power Systems: The Case of the 2021 Texas Electricity Crises Caused By Winter Storm Uri (#TexasFreeze)," Electr. J. 34, 107044 (2021).
[4] J. W. Busby et al., "Cascading Risks: Understanding the 2021 Winter Blackout in Texas," Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 77, 102106 (2021).
[5] "State of Texas: Energy Sector Risk Profile," U.S. Department of Energy, March 2021.
[6] C. Krauss et al., "How Texas' Drive for Energy Independence Set It Up for Disaster," New York Times, 21 Feb 21.
