Now, the three stages could be split among various companies in an effort to provide fair accessibility to high voltage transmission. No longer were electric utilities built as vertical monopolies, where generation, transmission and distribution were handled by a single company. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 required transmission line owners to allow electric generation companies open access to their network and led to a restructuring of how the electric industry operated in an effort to create competition in power generation. In 1975 the AC ties were disconnected, because DC ties were found to work more reliably. However, the AC ties did not have high capacity and were subject to oscillations, and so their connection proved unreliable. In 1934, with the passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, electric utilities were recognized as public goods of importance and were given outlined restrictions and regulatory oversight of their operations.įrom 1967, the East and West interconnections were directly connected together.
In the United States in the 1920s, utilities formed joint operations to share peak load coverage and backup power.
The Eastern and Western grids are connected with 1.32 GW. The regions are not usually directly connected or synchronized to each other, but there exist some HVDC interconnectors. Each region delivers power at a nominal 60 Hz frequency. Three other regions include the Texas Interconnection, the Quebec Interconnection, and the Alaska Interconnection. The Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection are the largest. The electrical power grid that powers Northern America is not a single grid, but is instead divided into multiple wide area synchronous grids. The electric power transmission grid of the contiguous United States consists of 120,000 miles (190,000 km) of lines operated by 500 companies.
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