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The agency assumed additional responsibilities following electric deregulation in Texas a decade ago. " ( Self-reliance was also made easier in Texas, especially in the early days, because the state has substantial coal, natural gas and oil resources of its own to fuel power plants.)ĮRCOT was formed in 1970, in the wake of a major blackout in the Northeast in November 1965, and it was tasked with managing grid reliability in accordance with national standards. Cudahy in a 1995 article, " The Second Battle of the Alamo: The Midnight Connection. "Freedom from federal regulation was a cherished goal - more so because Texas had no regulation until the 1970s," writes Richard D. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. The Texas Interconnected System - which for a long time was actually operated by two discrete entities, one for northern Texas and one for southern Texas - had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. These ties, and the accompanying transmission network, grew further during the second world war, when several Texas utilities joined together to form the Texas Interconnected System, which allowed them to link to the big dams along Texas rivers and also send extra electricity to support the ramped-up factories aiding the war effort. Later, particularly during the first world war, utilities began to link themselves together. In the decades after Thomas Edison turned on the country's first power plant in Manhattan in 1882, small generating plants sprouted across Texas, bringing electric light to cities. The separation of the Texas grid from the rest of the country has its origins in the evolution of electric utilities early last century. This presumably has to do with the history of various utilities' service territories and the remoteness of the non-ERCOT locations (for example the Panhandle is closer to Kansas than to Dallas, notes Kenneth Starcher of the Alternative Energy Institute in Canyon), but Texplainer is still figuring out the particulars on this. El Paso is on another grid, as is the upper Panhandle and a chunk of East Texas. ERCOT does not actually cover all of Texas. The Texas grid is called ERCOT, and it is run by an agency of the same name - the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection - and Texas. Texas' secessionist inclinations have at least one modern outlet: the electric grid. Why does Texas have its own electric grid? If you're looking for the latest updates on the February 2021 winter storm, head over to our homepage or follow us on Twitter. This story was originally published in 2011. Welcome to The Texas Tribune's "Texplainer" series, where we answer questions from readers like you.