baha - The roots of ERCOT go back to WWII believe it or not. Back when the United States were much more united then they are now. LOL. And for Dog's sake don't buy into the fairly universal misbelief that our politicians get reelected thanks to support from the petroleum industry: they get to stay in office by keeping the voters content. If anything the Texas petroleum industry is held "captive" by the state's politicians. Proof of that is the $10+ BILLION in our state's "rainy day" sovereign fund thanks to the severance taxes and other fees collected from our industry. Just the oil/NG taxes collected by the state in the last 10 years exceeded $35 BILLION. Which is why the state didn't have to take a penny out of our "rainy day" sovereign fund to pay for the $7 BILLION grid upgrade. Also why Texas has no state income tax for individuals.
And as I mentioned solar, thanks to lower costs, is about to bust loose. And ERCOT, which controls the electricity generation of the largest fossil fuel producing state, is all behind it: Grid-scale Solar Emerges: Installed capacity of grid-scale solar nearly doubled in 2016, from 288 MW to 554 MW, and ERCOT put a new solar forecast in place to support reliable integration of this emerging generation resource.
Back to the origins of ERCOT:
1941 - At the beginning of World War II, several electric utilities in Texas banded together as the Texas Interconnected System (TIS) to support the war effort. They sent excess power supplies to industrial manufacturing companies on the Gulf Coast to provide reliable electricity supplies for energy-intensive aluminum smelting. Recognizing the reliability advantages of remaining interconnected, the TIS members continued to use and develop the interconnected grid. TIS members adopted official operating guides for their interconnected power system and established two monitoring centers within the control centers of two utilities, one in North Texas and one in South Texas.
And as Paul Harvey would say: "Here's the rest of the story".
http://www.ercot.com/about/profile/history