Texas’ Biggest County Explores Exiting Power Grid After Storm

(Bloomberg) -- Harris County, Texas, is exploring ways to draw electricity from other states -- including quitting the power grid that came close to collapse during last month’s historic freeze.

County commissioners voted on Monday to examine if there’s a way to withdraw from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or Ercot, which ordered widespread outages starting on Feb. 15 as surging demand ran headlong into a plunge in available power supplies.

State regulators “failed to take substantial action” over the last decade to toughen electricity infrastructure to prevent disasters like last month’s, Commissioner Adrian Garcia said during the meeting. “Our trust in the state has been shattered at this point.”

Harris County is the third-largest county in the nation and home to Houston, the energy capital of the Western Hemisphere. The vote came just hours after Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick called on the leaders of the utilities commission and Ercot to resign.

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