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The separate grid is pretty much purely political. It may be non-sensical to people outside of Texas, but inside Texas there are a significant number of people

The separate grid is pretty much purely political. It may be non-sensical to people outside of Texas, but inside Texas there are a significant number of people who believe in, let's call it, "Independent Texas". And it would actually make a lot of sense for more states to have completely independent grids. Problem of course, is that most states are far too poor for such an extravagance.

jorvi 7y ago
Why does it make sense to have independent grids? In Europe most of our grids are already connected and there are plans to create a supergrid that stretches all the way from Finland down to North Africa (mainly to get connected to the future Saharan solar plants). Usually the bigger the grid the more resilient it is and the less dispersion there is in demand.
- torstenvl 7y ago
  An assessment of resilience requires an assessment of the threat model. The U.S., as a superpower and direct rival to both Russia and China, as well as a country with comparatively low regulatory oversight of cyber security, has a very different threat model than Europe.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Yep, and this is why electrical grid issues never take down entire regions of the US! Like the 2003 Northeast blackout, for instance. [0] Things like that, where an error in one part of the grid cascades into massive issues elsewhere - those don't ever happen. Sometimes, being big is a danger. Even when that's not the case, it can be worth accepting the same risk of each individual point on the map losing power if it means that (for instance) Ohio still has power while Indiana's in the dark and vise versa. I'd rather have one state in the Northeast lose power each year than have every state lose power at the same time every 15 years, if that makes any sense. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
  - jorvi 7y ago
    You can be sarcastic all you want, it doesn't make you right. I never said connecting grids makes them invulnerable, just more resilient. Connecting the EU grids has made them more stable, made electricity cheaper, made energy production more efficient (no more hydro going to waste), etc. etc. There is indeed risk for cascading failure but it is very rare (how long have the US grids been interconnected vs. how many times has there been a massive, multi-state blackout?) and with EU countries higher attention to infrastructure maintenance the risk is even less.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      You asked "Why does it make sense to have independent grids?" and I provided a reason. "But that'll never happen to us!" feels rather naive, personally - I think massive, deliberate power outages have a decent chance of occurring over the next 50 years. Future of cyberwarfare and all. (And sometimes a system being extremely stable just means it's brittle, not strong)
      - Scipio_Afri 7y ago
        The word you're looking for is resilience. That is basically all the regulators and grid ISOs do for the most part, make sure the grid is stable with different power sources of all types - be it gas generators and wind turbines that exist within a region under their control, or connections to outside grids. Regulators, national security people and others are definitely looking at what a hacking event might look like. The various grids, connected to each other or not, are definitely not as well designed to be resilient to something like a deliberate malicious act to damage power equipment by essentially hacking into the control systems to do something that they never were intended to do. The design of electrical power grids is such that their control systems are by their very nature suppose to keep frequency and voltage within tolerances no matter the unpredictability of the grid. This is the definition of stability and resiliency that you're talking about. And the design takes into consideration failures of any device on the grid. That being said, even being a minor power grid, it isn't actually isolated. Its just not subject to FERC regulations. But for the most part, its own regulations are similar to that of what other grid operators are doing, because it makes sense to do for grid stability reasons. "The Texas Interconnection is tied to the Eastern Interconnection with two DC ties, and has a DC tie and a VFT to non-NERC systems in Mexico. There is one AC tie switch in Dayton, Texas that has been used only one time in its history (after Hurricane Ike). On October 13, 2009, the Tres Amigas SuperStation was announced to connect the Eastern, Western and Texas Interconnections via three 5 GW superconductor links.[2] As of 2017, the project was reduced in scope and only related infrastructure was constructed for nearby wind projects connecting to the Western Interconnection."
- chiph 7y ago
  Because some generating units require electricity themselves before they can be brought online. A good example is a nuclear station - you need electricity to run the cooling pumps and withdraw (carefully!) the control rods, before steam generation starts and the turbines start spinning. While nuclear plants do have diesel generators for this, it'd still be a good idea to have one or maybe two sections of the country which could bootstrap the rest of the North American grid(s) should there be a continental blackout.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Usually the bigger the grid the more resilient it is and the less dispersion there is in demand. Except when it isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout
fastball 7y ago
How is that non-sensical? The entire purpose of states is to be independent. Texas just actually takes it to heart to act like an actual separate entity wherever it can.
- rswail 7y ago
  In order to form a more perfect Union... The entire purpose of states is not to be independent, the purpose of states is to provide a level of government closer to the People. The United States is an agreement between the States. Secession from the United States is against the law. It was ruled on in 1869. There is nothing in the Constitution allowing for secession, as opposed to Article 50 in the EU law that is specifically about how a member State can leave the EU after joining.
  - dexterdog 7y ago
    There doesn't need to be something in the Constitution to allow for secession. There needs to be something in it to disallow it, otherwise it falls under the rights given by the red-headed step-child known as the 10th amendment. Regardless of that it generally just goes with where you fall in the compact-contract debate.
mensetmanusman 7y ago
It will help during a war for sure.
- mattigames 7y ago
  It could backfire I'm the case of war, if an enemy gets control of Texas the US can no longer cut their energy supply.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    That’s a big if.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      Getting a hold of Texas is a lot easier than getting a hold on pretty much anyplace in the MidWest. That's for sure. But it's irrelevant in modern warfare anyway. The right play is to just flatten most of our states outright. You don't fight hot wars with amphibious landings anymore. Hot wars between major powers would be over in a matter of hours these days.
      - philwelch 7y ago
        Cities are beside the point. Occupying Texas (or admittedly the Midwest) would be like occupying Afghanistan or Iraq except the insurgents would have even more technicals and many of them would have US military training.
        bilbo0s 7y ago
        I mean, as I said, the planet's great powers don't plan wars with other great powers around the idea of an occupation. But as far as ease of implementation, it's obviously easier to conquer Texas because of the ginormous warm water coastline. Multimodal landings are not even possible in a place like Minnesota. You'd have to fight just to get there, and just like Russia, you'd likely freeze to death trying to take the place. Fighting is infinitely more easy in places like Texas or the south in general, than it would be in, say, Minnesota or North Dakota, with 4 to 6 months of bitter, far northern winter per annum. But again, completely irrelevant anyway, because total war means total war. If it weren't for the fact that most of them would be dead at the time, I'd argue that people who think in terms of occupations would be disagreeably surprised after the next war between great powers. A pretty common mistake in military thought has always been "fighting the last war" so to speak.

jorvi 7y ago

Why does it make sense to have independent grids? In Europe most of our grids are already connected and there are plans to create a supergrid that stretches all the way from Finland down to North Africa (mainly to get connected to the future Saharan solar plants). Usually the bigger the grid the more resilient it is and the less dispersion there is in demand.

torstenvl 7y ago
An assessment of resilience requires an assessment of the threat model. The U.S., as a superpower and direct rival to both Russia and China, as well as a country with comparatively low regulatory oversight of cyber security, has a very different threat model than Europe.
DuskStar 7y ago
Yep, and this is why electrical grid issues never take down entire regions of the US! Like the 2003 Northeast blackout, for instance. [0] Things like that, where an error in one part of the grid cascades into massive issues elsewhere - those don't ever happen. Sometimes, being big is a danger. Even when that's not the case, it can be worth accepting the same risk of each individual point on the map losing power if it means that (for instance) Ohio still has power while Indiana's in the dark and vise versa. I'd rather have one state in the Northeast lose power each year than have every state lose power at the same time every 15 years, if that makes any sense. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
- jorvi 7y ago
  You can be sarcastic all you want, it doesn't make you right. I never said connecting grids makes them invulnerable, just more resilient. Connecting the EU grids has made them more stable, made electricity cheaper, made energy production more efficient (no more hydro going to waste), etc. etc. There is indeed risk for cascading failure but it is very rare (how long have the US grids been interconnected vs. how many times has there been a massive, multi-state blackout?) and with EU countries higher attention to infrastructure maintenance the risk is even less.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    You asked "Why does it make sense to have independent grids?" and I provided a reason. "But that'll never happen to us!" feels rather naive, personally - I think massive, deliberate power outages have a decent chance of occurring over the next 50 years. Future of cyberwarfare and all. (And sometimes a system being extremely stable just means it's brittle, not strong)
    - Scipio_Afri 7y ago
      The word you're looking for is resilience. That is basically all the regulators and grid ISOs do for the most part, make sure the grid is stable with different power sources of all types - be it gas generators and wind turbines that exist within a region under their control, or connections to outside grids. Regulators, national security people and others are definitely looking at what a hacking event might look like. The various grids, connected to each other or not, are definitely not as well designed to be resilient to something like a deliberate malicious act to damage power equipment by essentially hacking into the control systems to do something that they never were intended to do. The design of electrical power grids is such that their control systems are by their very nature suppose to keep frequency and voltage within tolerances no matter the unpredictability of the grid. This is the definition of stability and resiliency that you're talking about. And the design takes into consideration failures of any device on the grid. That being said, even being a minor power grid, it isn't actually isolated. Its just not subject to FERC regulations. But for the most part, its own regulations are similar to that of what other grid operators are doing, because it makes sense to do for grid stability reasons. "The Texas Interconnection is tied to the Eastern Interconnection with two DC ties, and has a DC tie and a VFT to non-NERC systems in Mexico. There is one AC tie switch in Dayton, Texas that has been used only one time in its history (after Hurricane Ike). On October 13, 2009, the Tres Amigas SuperStation was announced to connect the Eastern, Western and Texas Interconnections via three 5 GW superconductor links.[2] As of 2017, the project was reduced in scope and only related infrastructure was constructed for nearby wind projects connecting to the Western Interconnection."
chiph 7y ago
Because some generating units require electricity themselves before they can be brought online. A good example is a nuclear station - you need electricity to run the cooling pumps and withdraw (carefully!) the control rods, before steam generation starts and the turbines start spinning. While nuclear plants do have diesel generators for this, it'd still be a good idea to have one or maybe two sections of the country which could bootstrap the rest of the North American grid(s) should there be a continental blackout.
reaperducer 7y ago
Usually the bigger the grid the more resilient it is and the less dispersion there is in demand. Except when it isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout

fastball 7y ago

How is that non-sensical? The entire purpose of states is to be independent. Texas just actually takes it to heart to act like an actual separate entity wherever it can.

rswail 7y ago
In order to form a more perfect Union... The entire purpose of states is not to be independent, the purpose of states is to provide a level of government closer to the People. The United States is an agreement between the States. Secession from the United States is against the law. It was ruled on in 1869. There is nothing in the Constitution allowing for secession, as opposed to Article 50 in the EU law that is specifically about how a member State can leave the EU after joining.
- dexterdog 7y ago
  There doesn't need to be something in the Constitution to allow for secession. There needs to be something in it to disallow it, otherwise it falls under the rights given by the red-headed step-child known as the 10th amendment. Regardless of that it generally just goes with where you fall in the compact-contract debate.

mensetmanusman 7y ago

It will help during a war for sure.

mattigames 7y ago
It could backfire I'm the case of war, if an enemy gets control of Texas the US can no longer cut their energy supply.
- philwelch 7y ago
  That’s a big if.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Getting a hold of Texas is a lot easier than getting a hold on pretty much anyplace in the MidWest. That's for sure. But it's irrelevant in modern warfare anyway. The right play is to just flatten most of our states outright. You don't fight hot wars with amphibious landings anymore. Hot wars between major powers would be over in a matter of hours these days.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      Cities are beside the point. Occupying Texas (or admittedly the Midwest) would be like occupying Afghanistan or Iraq except the insurgents would have even more technicals and many of them would have US military training.
      - bilbo0s 7y ago
        I mean, as I said, the planet's great powers don't plan wars with other great powers around the idea of an occupation. But as far as ease of implementation, it's obviously easier to conquer Texas because of the ginormous warm water coastline. Multimodal landings are not even possible in a place like Minnesota. You'd have to fight just to get there, and just like Russia, you'd likely freeze to death trying to take the place. Fighting is infinitely more easy in places like Texas or the south in general, than it would be in, say, Minnesota or North Dakota, with 4 to 6 months of bitter, far northern winter per annum. But again, completely irrelevant anyway, because total war means total war. If it weren't for the fact that most of them would be dead at the time, I'd argue that people who think in terms of occupations would be disagreeably surprised after the next war between great powers. A pretty common mistake in military thought has always been "fighting the last war" so to speak.