Why Texas Will Resist the Call for a Unified Smart Grid

"'If you go to either of the other two grids you've got to get 20-something state utility commissions to agree on something,' B.J. Stanbery, the founder of the Austin-based solar manufacturer HelioVolt, says. 'In Texas, we've only got one to persuade. Now, that's a big benefit.' As a result, Texas has, in very short order, erected enough wind turbines to become the national leader in wind-energy production--by a wide margin."

It was surprising to learn this fact in the article about how the regulatory environment influences innovation in energy production. I expected a completely different spin from the article title.

I have a different theory. I believe Texas will resist this because Texans have been to New Mexico. Anybody who thinks it's a good idea for the entire US energy system to rest on ANYTHING in New Mexico is out of their freaking minds. I've lived in New Mexico. There was a shootout at a major intersection where the suspect didn't even have a gun. They cornered him, and one of the cops got too excited. He shot at the suspect, cops on the other side thought the suspect was shooting at them, so they shot back, then the other cops figured it was the suspect too and shot back as well. This was at 3pm, a couple blocks away from a school, on the busiest road in the city (Santa Fe). In New Mexico, more cops, judges, and state senators get arrested for drunk driving than anywhere else in the country by a HUGE margin. It isn't a close race. They own the category. I didn't even read the article, I'm just telling you now, ANYBODY who pins major infrastructure on the assumption that anybody who does anything in New Mexico does it competently is just asking for trouble. (The article mentions some crazy plan to build a "superstation" in New Mexico. Like we need centralized energy hubs, in the age of the Internet.)

In any large scale (ie, too large for social sanctions to work) cost or risk sharing system, the careful and competent get screwed over to benefit the sloppy and stupid. Large scale insurance schemes were where I first noticed this. And during one of the French Republics, Bastiat wrote in his classic "The State"; "Government is that great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."