Work

A method for assessing economic, environmental, and reliability tradeoffs of interregional transmission connecting ERCOT (the Texas grid) to the eastern and western grids

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Reliable development of the power grid is an evolving concern for humanity due to extreme weather that frequently threatens power sector infrastructure. The state of Texas is a uniquely structured testbed for grid planners to study when looking for solutions to development, innovation, and overcoming such challenges. Texas is a global leader in energy production, energy consumption, and maintains an unusually diverse fuel mix. In addition, the state has experienced winter storms and heat waves that have threatened power sector infrastructure and resulted in recent blackouts and calls for demand side conservation. One of the most devastating of these events was the North American winter storm, later dubbed “Winter Storm Uri” by the Weather Channel, that froze the region in February 2021 and led to an extended power outage event that put the majority of Texan residents in darkness for days. While preparing to avoid such outage events in the future, various tools have been proposed to improve grid reliability, including energy efficiency, demand response, and distributed energy resources. An additional option would be to develop interregional transmission that connects the Texas grid to other national grids. To assess the merits of this idea, we developed a novel, universally-applicable and internationally-relevant framework to study how the Texas grid would evolve alongside access to various interregional ties. Then, our method allows us to stress the synthetic grid structure and analyze how it would respond to the shock of a simulated winter storm event. Our method leverages open-source modeling tools, such as PowerGenome, pyGRETA, and GenX to synthesize unique zonal grid data, construct a consolidated network of model regions, and simulate different developmental pathways of capacity expansion and operational dispatch. We demonstrate our method with an analysis connecting the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid that serves most of Texas, the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), the grid that serves the western half of the contiguous U.S., and the Eastern Interconnect, the grid that serves the eastern half of the contiguous U.S.. Our results indicate that interregional transmission connecting the ERCOT grid to other grids lowers the costs and emissions of development and operation. Additionally, the interregional connections between ERCOT and other national grids can reduce the amount of total load shed required through an extreme winter storm event, thus improving the reliability of the combined grid.

Source: Applied Energy

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2025.127015

Authors: Drew A. Kassel, Joshua D. Rhodes, Michael E. Webber

Institution: The University of Texas at Austin

Language: English

Topic: Electric Power System Optimization

Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Industry, innovation and infrastructure, Affordable and clean energy, Climate action

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,430