Welcome to the Engines of Texanity.

Episode 11, when Texanity fails, and when it doesn't.

About once a year, it gets cold enough in San Antonio for people to overreact and pretend like it's going to snow.

But since January of 1986, that hadn't actually happened.

So when I looked at the following week's forecast on Friday, February 12th, 2021, I didn't really believe what I saw.

The forecasted high for Monday, February 15th was 30 degrees,

with projections of freezing rain, sleet, and maybe snow,

in a low of 14 degrees?

Those kind of numbers didn't even make sense,

and so, like a lot of Texxans i basically ignored them the electric reliability

council of texas or ercot however was definitely thinking about it and they were just as definitely

worried urcot as most people in texas now know is the independent system operator of Texas's electrical grid.

But what makes Urquhart especially unique is that every other state in the U.S. gets their electricity

from interstate grids that cross state lines and are regulated by the federal government.

Texas's size, energy richness, and independent nature, some might call it

hostility to federal regulation, has allowed it to develop its own self-regulated electrical grid.

Inspired by the success of deregulation in the airline and other industries, in 1999, Texas also

deregulated its electrical markets,

which means that instead of fixing prices for electricity so as to guarantee a fixed profit,

a la the Anglo-American model, electricity generators in Texas and distributors would now have to compete on price,

a la the Southwest Airlines model.

And like with the old Spanish irrigation ditches, the transmission lines that moved the electricity around, they were maintained as open access, bienes de us so common, to be administered in this

...