UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of Gas Shortages

Re:UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of Gas S... by themitigating on Thursday October 06, 2022 @02:27PM (#33112047)

Texas is disconnected from the national power grid even though it would help.

"According to an analysis by the American Council on Renewable Energy, each additional gigawatt of transmission capacity connecting the Texas power grid with neighboring states could have saved nearly $1 billion and prevented blackouts in around 200,000 Texas homes during Winter Storm Uri last year."

"House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that the state’s denizens would prefer a prolonged blackout over federal regulators requiring changes to the system. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/14/texas-national-power...

It seems like Texas having a robust power supply is second to ideological virtue signaling by republicans

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Re:UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of Gas S... by alexchamberlain on Thursday October 06, 2022 @02:45PM (#33112294)

AFAIK there isn't a national power grid in America- there are at least 5 or so State+ size grids, with loads of smaller ones and a whole bunch of interconnects. I'm fairly sure Texas (ERCOT) has interconnects to other grids.

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Re:UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of Gas S... by Izkata on Thursday October 06, 2022 @03:01PM (#33112517)

5 grids (of which Texas is one), and they're not even just US ones - we share with Canada: https://i.cbc.ca/1.5921020.1613772812!/fileImage/httpImage/i...

They're then further subdivided into operators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss...

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Re:UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of Gas S... by pharrington on Thursday October 06, 2022 @03:42PM (#33113044)

In February of last year, a winter storm led to Texas having multi-day power outages, exasperated by the fact that ERCOT does not connect to any other grids.

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Re:UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of Gas S... by alexchamberlain on Thursday October 06, 2022 @03:45PM (#33113090)

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection#Ties, the Texas grid has DC ties to the Eastern grid, and similar ties into Mexico.

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Re:UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of Gas S... by pharrington on Thursday October 06, 2022 @04:10PM (#33113410)

Strictly speaking - 3 DC ties (from some cursory searching, they seem to only be used for power export) and 1 AC tie, that has only ever been used once. Texas is technically, but not meaningfully, connected to neighboring power grids.

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Re:UK Plans for Three-Hour Power Blackouts in Event of Gas S... by themitigating on Thursday October 06, 2022 @04:12PM (#33113436)

I saw the term used to describe the various interconnected states but I think it's used because federal regulations can apply if one states connects with at least another, hence national

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