Tonight (8/10) on CSPAN's Y2K program, Steve Horn mentioned that Texas was linked to Mexico on the power grid. I assumed he meant "New" Mexico, until his next sentence was to link some other states with Canada. In response to an earlier message on this board, Rick Cowles had said that Texas was looking pretty good, was pretty much an island to itself. Since I'm in Texas this sounded rather comforting, however, Rep. Horn's statement today has just blasted that slight comfort zone. Anyone have any knowledge about this and just what it might mean to us here in Texas. No offense to our southern neighbor's utility services, but... Sure am glad I have that kerosene heater! Now if I can just solve the problem of keeping the water well pumping!

-- Anonymous, August 10, 1998

Answers

I'm looking at an interconnect map, Linda, and I see connections from Texas (ERCOT) into the Southwest Power Pool consisting of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Kansas. Nothing on the map indicates a connection to Mexico, though.

-- Anonymous, August 11, 1998

Thanks for the response, John. I did a little research on the web today and found the following listed below. (Look for the **s below to find mention of the Tx/Mex connection) Of course, I really don't know what this means, but it does get my attention! When I found these references I quit looking any further, gulped, and sat back to wait for the responses here (hoping I would hear it really won't make much difference, but deep down fearing that this really just increases the complexity of it all --- please tell I'm wrong, Rick C.!)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/chg_str/chapter3.html Electric Power Generation Components

...The three networks are (1) the Eastern Interconnected System, consisting of the eastern two-thirds of the United States; (2) the Western Interconnected System, consisting primarily of the Southwest and areas west of the Rocky Mountains; and (3) the Texas Interconnected System (Figure 8). The latter is not interconnected with the other two networks (except by certain direct current lines). The other two networks have limited interconnections to each other. *****Both the Western and the Texas Interconnect are linked with different parts of Mexico.***** The Eastern and Western Interconnects are completely integrated with most of Canada or have links to the Quebec Province power grid.

Also from the same site:

...In recent years, U.S. international trade in electricity has returned to the levels of the mid-1980s (Figure 10). U.S. trade is mostly imports, which were more than five times greater than exports in 1995. Normally, most imports are from Canada (95 percent of total gross imports in 1995) and the remainder is from *****Mexico*****. Imported power is particularly important to the NPCC and MAPP regions of NERC, where gross imports were 9.8 and 7.7 percent, re spectively, of retail sales by utilities in 1995. In contrast, gross imports for the Nation as a whole that year were 1.6 percent of retail sales by utilities.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/pubs_html/epa_1994/volume2/chapter5.html Chapter 5 U.S. Electric Power Transactions

U.S. electric utilities have taken advantage of being able to enter into international trade agreements to acquire energy from Canada and *****Mexico*****. These trade agreements between utilities cover a variety of transaction options. The options include purchasing nonfirm energy from relatively inexpensive renewable resources (hydroelectric from Canada and geothermal from *****Mexico*****); acquiring additional generating capability to support the requirements for supply at U.S. electric utilities; the holding of purchased electricity (as reservoir water) to be reacquired when needed by U.S. electric utilities; and sharing the benefits of coordinated operations planning for the systems. In some instances, consumers can be served more efficiently if they are connected to foreign transmission lines, because they are geographically closer to those lines.

-- Anonymous, August 11, 1998