Last summer, when the brutal heat strained Texas’ electric grid and increased worries about blackouts, the grid imported a modest amount of power from Mexico and elsewhere in the United States.

“It obviously helped,” said Dan Woodfin, the director of system operations for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or Ercot, the grid operator. Those electricity imports amounted, on some August days, to nearly the equivalent of a nuclear reactor’s output, or enough to power more than 200,000 homes in the summer.

The Texas electric grid is proudly isolated. While most other states operate on a pair of grids that serve the eastern and western halves of the country, Texas has evolved on its own, in order to keep federal regulators at bay.

But occasionally, as it did last summer, the Texas grid leans heavily on the few links that connect it electrically to the outside world. Experts say closer links with other grids could be in the state’s future, even when no crisis is brewing, though state officials do not want too many ties for fear of triggering federal oversight.