Ignoring the old adage about good fences making good neighbors, FERC chairman Jon Wellinghoff recently began urging ERCOT to increase its interconnections with neighboring grids.
Speaking during a teleconference from Chicago, Wellinghoff said that creating more interconnections would facilitate the use of renewable energy nationwide.
“If Texas could be more strongly interconnected to the Midwest, for
example, they could integrate even more wind into the system,” Wellinghoff said.
Texas has largely avoided getting overly linked with the nation’s two other grid systems -- the Western Interconnect and the Eastern Interconnect. Connecting with the two other grids would bring ERCOT under the jurisdiction of FERC, a situation that has been strongly opposed by many in the Lone Star State.
But Wellinghoff suggested that perhaps ERCOT could be granted an exemption to FERC rules.
“I do believe that a national renewable portfolio standard is a necessary and desirable step, but only a first step,” Wellinghoff said, according to May 6 report in Platts. “We simply cannot incrementally develop these renewables without building up the entire grid into a strong grid system.”
-- R.A. Dyer
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