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.
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.
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.
The main benefit from having one ISO in the US would be a reduction of rules. If you wanted to build solar or gas or wind in California, it would be subject to the same grid rules as Texas (e.g. how to handle a fault on a line - how quickly it recovers from fault, from frequency or voltage deviations, etc.). The fact that a particular power grid is isolated from others means they can't benefit from cheaper power due to overproduction of say wind power in Kansas. That electricity goes to someone else or goes to waste.
Finally if anyone here cared to read, the FERC doesn't regulate the Texas grid.. it's ISO has its own rules (which I'm pretty sure are similar to the rest of the ISOs in the US which are subject to meeting the FERC regulations or going beyond them). The Texas grid is connected to other grids.
"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." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
I worked next to a power plant that shared some network components with my employer at the time. They did an emergency shutdown minutes before we were impacted by blaster. Some of our upstream providers operating backbones in NY also were impacted and had capacity issues due to the worms. At least one of those providers had issues for days after the initial incident.
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.
(And sometimes a system being extremely stable just means it's brittle, not strong)
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."
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.
Except when it isn't.
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.
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.
But my point is that even if you allow, for the sake of argument, that the “great power” phase of the war entails a two-week blitzkrieg, that still doesn’t get you out of the counterinsurgency business. And Texas is land that an enemy would definitely want to hold just for natural resources and logistics.
As for fighting the last war, the last great-power war had blitzkriegs that resolved themselves within weeks, protracted operations along broad fronts, irregular partisan warfare, and every other form of conflict one could envision. The Battle of France is just as much “the last war” as the Eastern Front was. I think the only sure thing is that we don’t know what the next great power war will look like, unless it’s merely a catastrophic nuclear exchange.
That's exactly what the next great war will look like, because you just nuke enemy formations and flotillas. Then you move on to nuking their cities when you realize they did the same to you and you no longer have an army or navy to fight with. Like I said, maybe a matter of hours. Days if we get lucky. No way it would last 2 weeks though.
That's kind of why our entire discussion is irrelevant. It would never happen. You don't really fight against nukes, you just die.
But for the sake of our hypothetical discussion:
As far as sending helicopters to Minnesota, those better be fairly long range helicopters. And then what's your attrition getting there? That's on top of the attrition getting enough helicopters for an invasion force into position to even be launched. Texas, you just take the attrition getting into position, but the beaches you can hit easily and with everything at your disposal without taking much additional attrition.
Minnesota, North Dakota, all that northern stuff is just bad business. Take the coastlines, and starve the midwest out, that's the best course of action. Going to Minnesota to fight through to Washington is just really bad business. If you can't even handle Texas, Minnesota will literally freeze you to death.
The range needed to fly helicopters from the Gulf of Mexico to Minnesota is fairly comparable to the range needed to fly helicopters from the Arabian Sea to Afghanistan, which has been done. This would require air supremacy and effective SEAD, but so would an amphibious landing in Texas (though admittedly, you need air supremacy and SEAD over a smaller area if you're only invading Texas). You might even end up using helicopters even for your "amphibious landing" in Texas; landing in boats like Normandy these days can be a dubious notion. Even so, you have the exact same set of questions re. landing craft that you do re. helicopters.
I dunno about Minnesota, but an enemy would occupy North Dakota for the same reason they would occupy Texas and the Gulf Coast: to secure the oil and gas supply. Even if Washington has already surrendered, The Bad Guys would need oil, and that means they would need Bad Guys on the ground to secure it. But they would need a lot of Bad Guys, because there are a lot of Texans with the inclination and ability to fight back.
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.