Could Texas’ power grid connect to New Mexico?

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that a small regional electric cooperative in far West Texas is seeking to connect portions of New Mexico to Texas’ self-contained power grid. The Rio Grande Electric Cooperative, a rural electric retail company that owns thousands of miles of power lines across 18 Texas counties, is not wholly part of ERCOT, but it wants to be. Last month, the power provider petitioned the federal regulatory body overseeing the nation’s electric grid and asked regulators to determine whether connecting their customers to ERCOT, including homes and businesses in two New Mexico counties, would trigger federal regulation. Texas has maintained an energy grid largely disconnected from the rest of the country. This isolation has allowed the state to avoid federal regulation, which many lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have touted as an economic advantage contributing to the state’s sustained economic growth.

The electric cooperative argues allowing ERCOT power to cross state lines would not trigger federal regulation because all the large electric transmission lines they own are in Texas. The electricity that crosses state lines is transmitted on smaller distribution lines like those connected to homes and small businesses across Texas. They argue that the Federal Electric Regulatory Commission does not have jurisdiction over those lines. The Rio Grande Electric Cooperative’s CEO Theresa Quiroz said in an interview that allowing the co-op to connect its remaining customers to ERCOT was “critical” to the organization’s ability to meet future power needs in its coverage area. “We have a lot of entities inquiring of us whether we have the capacity and ability to serve them,” Quiroz said. “We have an obligation to serve them. However, we can’t do it with what we have in place. At this point, we are having to turn away customers, and we don’t want to do that.” No hearings have been scheduled in the case, but the Rio Grande Electric Cooperative asked federal regulators to issue a ruling by Feb. 24.