When it comes to keeping the lights on, bills pending in this year’s legislative sessions are focusing on generating power even if it means going to other states.
House Bill 838 would require some facilities that purchase power from and operate under the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to interconnect to other grids in neighboring states.
The reliability of the Texas power grid has been scrutinized since it nearly collapsed during an Arctic cold snap in February 2021. The storm, known as Uri, brought record amounts of snow to every county in the state and killed 246 people.
The bill would allow generation facilities to access and purchase power wholesale from outside the ERCOT’s grid region, further expanding their means of meeting demand through constructing, owning, or operating other facilities.
The commission may request any federal approval necessary for a facility to carry out interconnection and will require any independent organization, operating in the ERCOT power region, to approve interconnections of facilities unless the independent organization finds there is an imminent risk to public health and safety.
During a public hearing on March 24, 2021, then-ERCOT CEO, Bill Magness said it had no choice but to turn people’s power off because ERCOT couldn’t meet demand. He said, “load shedding,” or turning off some power prevented a total grid collapse.
He reiterated that although ERCOT is “a nonprofit corporation governed by a board of directors and subject to oversight by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Texas legislature,” it does not own, operate or have any enforcement authority over any electric generation facilities. In 2021, when demand was simply too high for ERCOT’s supply despite its backup of generative power, it turned to load shedding.
However, it has been argued that even with interconnection, load shedding is a possible outcome under extreme weather conditions that increase neighboring grids’ native loads. This can result in depleted neighboring grids, like in the case of the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), two neighboring regions that serve portions of North and East Texas.
In 2021, the SPP and MISO regions satisfied their native load with their own resources then supplemented with imported power from neighboring grids. The “supply from neighboring grids declined as native loads in those regions also grew,” leaving the SPP to order mandatory load shedding to avoid total collapse of their power grid, according to the Baker Institute for Public Policy.
HB 838 states that the outlined provisions would be effective for interconnections both synchronous and non-synchronous in nature. Synchronous interconnections of the power grid involve importing power at the same frequency that the grid is operating at, and are the main type of interconnection mentioned in the bill. In 2021, plants generating synchronous power from natural gas and coal failed to heed ERCOT’s warnings to winterize effectively and fell offline when hit with extreme temperatures.
There is no explanation of non-synchronous sources of power, such as wind turbines and solar power systems, in the bill. It does not detail what the sources of funding are for facilitating future interconnections of the Texas power grid, or how they will be budgeted. The office of Rep. Reynolds did not respond to requests for an interview.
