University of Texas mechanical engineering professor Michael Webber, who assisted in the bill’s drafting, has said that creating new interconnections would allow Texas to export clean energy to urban centers on both coasts.
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Find out more about ERCOT’s “island status” in the OCSC report, “The Story of ERCOT,” found under this website’s Reports tab.
ERCOT would end its isolation as an independent power grid and instead connect to adjoining grids under legislation filed in the United States Congress.
Dubbed the “Connect the Grid Act,” the legislation would mandate that the ERCOT grid operator coordinate with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to create high-voltage interconnections with the Southwest Power Pool, the Mid-continent Independent System Operator, and the Western Interconnection.
Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, filed the bill on February 14. “This is the first bill ever in the U.S. Congress to require ERCOT to finally interconnect,” the former Austin City Council member told a local radio outlet. “When we’re in trouble we should be able to pull in energy from our neighboring states, and when we have a surplus of energy … we should be able to sell it to them,” he said.
The bill’s co-sponsors in the House include fellow Austinite Rep. Lloyd Doggett and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, both Democrats. Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey is expected to carry the bill in the Senate.
Environmental Implications
University of Texas mechanical engineering professor Michael Webber, who assisted in the bill’s drafting, has said that creating new interconnections would allow Texas to export clean energy to urban centers on both coasts. Speaking with a local radio reporter, Webber also said that access to energy from neighboring grids during the 2021 winter storm emergency would have alleviated the resulting outages that led to hundreds of deaths.
In response to a media inquiry about Casar’s bill, an ERCOT spokesperson said that “any proposal to interconnect ERCOT to other regions raises potentially significant economic and reliability considerations that the Public Utility Commission of Texas is best situated to evaluate.” The ERCOT spokesperson also noted that the PUC recently initiated a proceeding to investigate the possibility of interconnections to other regions.