Comments by "Reecom98" (@reecom9884) on "Austin Mayor On Urgent Need For Water Amid Texas Crisis | NBC Nightly News" video.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) controls about 90% of the state’s electricity. The Texas power grid is independent from the rest of the country’s federal power grid regulation. Ironically, the parts of Texas that is connected to the nation electric grid stayed running due to federal regulation to maintain function during inclement weather. ERCOT deregulated these requirements. The “Green Power” is only used to supply only about 10% of the baseline electrical power in Texas because you can‘t increase the wind or sunshine to get additional power. The majority of power is from the Texas thermal power plants (I.e.; Natural gas, coal fired and nuclear). The thermal power plants are used for peak loads above the baseline loads because you can increase output or bring online power generators. The Texas ERCOT plants were not regulated to be functional during inclement weather, so the Natural gas line pipes were frozen and the coal plants were affected by the cold weather. The ERCOT plants are only paid when they produce electricity so to save cost they chose not to weatherize, whereas the federal power grid power plants must winterize and are paid a minimum sum to be on standby. The small areas in Texas that are connected to the national power grid are isolated from the ERCOT power grid. As long as Texas keeps their ERCOT power grid isolated from the rest of the country, the federal government has no regulatory control over the Texas ERCOT power grid. The federal government can only control the interstate commerce regulation between states. Trump’s former head of the Department of Energy was Rick Perry, the former Governor of Texas, in an interview he said that Texans would chose blackouts rather then have the Feds regulate the Texas power grid. I guess the Texas motto is “Give me no Regulation or give me Death“. Rick was the same guy on Dancing with the Stars (he lost).
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