Credit: Matthew Henry
The recent power outages in Texas brought attention to its power grid being separated from the rest of the country. While it is not immediately clear whether integration with other parts of the national grid would have completely eliminated the need for rolling outages, the state's inability to import significant amounts of electricity was decisive in the blackout.
A larger power grid has perks, but also has perils that researchers at Northwestern University are hoping to address to expedite integration and improvements to the system.
An obvious challenge in larger grids is that failures can propagate further -- in the case of Texas, across state lines. Another is that all power generators need to be kept synchronized to a common frequency in order to transmit energy. The U.S. is served by three "separate" grids: The Eastern interconnection, the Western interconnection and the Texas interconnection, interlinked only by direct-current power lines. Any persistent deviation in frequencies within a region can lead to an outage.