Santa Clara, CA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CENTRAL COAST COMMUNITY ENERGY, CITY OF PALO ALTO - (CA), CITY OF SANTA CLARA - (CA), PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC CO., TURLOCK IRRIGATION DISTRICT, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

CAISO (California Independent System Operator)

Highest grid access

500 kV

Substations in county

101

Industrial retail rate

21.6¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

6 serving utilities: 2.9 to 21.1¢/kWhLowest to highest industrial rate among the utilities serving this county (EIA-861 Sales to Ultimate Customers). A spread, not the county’s rate, and it covers only the serving utilities that report one.

Interconnection queue

None on record

Proposed generation

50 MW planned or under constructionUnits filed with EIA as planned or under construction (Form EIA-860M). Declared intent from the federal inventory, not the interconnection queue and not guaranteed capacity.

Grid carbon intensity

369 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

218 Mgal/dAll uses, freshwater. Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

210,222 employed in construction within ~120 kmA large build needs hundreds of skilled construction workers on site for one to three years. A county with few of them within commuting range means bussing crews in, per diem, and housing, which is real cost and schedule risk. This counts people employed in construction within about a 120 km drive (BLS QCEW), summed across nearby counties. It is not labor known to be available: most are already committed to other projects, and no public data reveals who is free.

Grid conditions in Santa Clara

Read on for the public power picture of Santa Clara in California, assembled for data center siting. At 500 kV, Santa Clara carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Santa Clara contains 101 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Santa Clara clears through the CAISO market (California Independent System Operator), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Santa Clara carries the state industrial average retail rate of 21.6 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Santa Clara, the per-utility spread is 6 serving utilities: 2.9 to 21.1¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Santa Clara, California shows no interconnection-queue project in the covered feeds, whether from real quiet or a feed not yet loaded. In Santa Clara, 50 MW is filed as planned or under construction in the federal EIA-860M inventory. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Santa Clara shows 369.346 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Santa Clara, the USGS 2015 compilation records 218.44 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Santa Clara sits within commuting range of roughly 210,222 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

Every figure for Santa Clara here is screening-grade and describes the county as a whole, not any single parcel within it. None of the figures for Santa Clara, California settles a site on its own; each one qualifies the others, and all of them come from public federal and state datasets. Settling a site in Santa Clara, California requires a study of the specific parcel, a step beyond the county-level picture drawn here. Sources and data dates for Santa Clara, California are logged directly below, so each figure on this page can be traced back to its public dataset.

Sources