Comment by schneems
6 hours ago
I guess you’re saying that the current status is mandated by the design of the grid. Which is true, but that status would be best described as “deregulated” rather than “purposeful regulation.”
Lack of regulation and oversite around weatherization and redundancy is the main source of our problems. The Texas’ grid is market based and so unregulated that it’s not connected to the national grid so it can avoid federal regulation.
I recommend this podcast to anyone interested https://kutkutx.studio/category/the-disconnect-power-politic.... I learned that our current Texas grid was designed by Enron.
Every single state surrounding Texas was also suffering from power outages due to the winter storm in 2021, despite all of those states being part of the non-Texas interconnections. The outages in those states weren’t as bad, but even if Texas was better connected to them, there’s no guarantee that they would have had any power to share.