Michigan is not connected to the national grid either? Or do they just have really bad outdated electrical infrastructure?
Both are wrong.
Yes we're connected to the grid but with both parts of the state being surrounded on 3 sides by water means only the bottom of the state (Lower Peninsula) is easily tied to the grid. The Upper Peninsula is also connected only on 1 side. Most other states have many more connections to the grid from multiple sides of the state.
That said, outages here are by no means statewide so I've no idea what they are talking about. For the past couple decades or more all outages here are very localized, usually perhaps a few hours long, very occasionally a couple days long so connections to the grid has nothing to do with it.
As the article says:
The study found that severe weather, like thunderstorms, caused 80% of U.S. power outages between 2000 and 2023. Power outages are often caused by downed power lines, fallen tree limbs and strong winds
same here. We just have a LOT more trees that take down power lines...
I know years ago (like the 80s and early 90s) there was talk of an underwater cable through one of the lakes between Michigan and Wisconsin and Canada did that ever happen? Not important to this discussion but it seemed like a good idea at the time can't find anything about it.
Back to this, one of the (many) issues the TX grid has is the size of the state and the way the population is dispersed. Yes, there are a lot of people, but it's a big state and outside of a few areas it has low population density. Taking NY as the counter it has 10 million less people 20 million in NY vs 30 million in TX but most of the NY people are in the downstate area so 15 of those 20 are in the NYC / Long Island area so when it was discovered how bad the grid was downstate although it was a large expense it was contained. Even if TX wanted to fix their grid, the cost of doing it to the level of where it should be would be so much more due to the amount of area needed to be covered.
-Dave
