La Plata, CO: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

EMPIRE ELECTRIC ASSN, INC, LA PLATA ELECTRIC ASSN, INC, PUBLIC SERVICE CO OF COLORADO, SAN MIGUEL POWER ASSN, INC, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

43

Industrial retail rate

9.1¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

5 serving utilities: 2.6 to 16.4¢/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

None on file (EIA-860M)Units 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

1,870 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

7,460 employed in construction within ~120 km (8 of 10 counties reporting)A 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 La Plata

For La Plata, Colorado, the following sections turn public grid records into a siting-oriented summary. The highest mapped voltage in La Plata is 345 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. La Plata carries 43 substations, a dense footprint across the county.

No organized wholesale market covers La Plata, Colorado, so capacity moves through the local utility and bilateral agreements. The state industrial average retail rate is 9.1 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to La Plata at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in La Plata that publish a rate range 5 serving utilities: 2.6 to 16.4¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

La Plata, Colorado has nothing in the interconnection queue across the feeds covered here, quiet or uningested. No generation is filed as planned or under construction in La Plata, Colorado in the federal EIA-860M inventory, a measured zero rather than missing data. Grid carbon intensity for La Plata, via its balancing authority, is 1,869.537 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across La Plata at 331.51 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of La Plata, about 7,460 people are employed in construction (BLS QCEW), which speaks to how far crews for a multi-year build would travel, not to labour known to be free.

Read the La Plata figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for La Plata, Colorado qualify one another, so grid access, substation density, market membership, and rate are meant to be read as a set, not in isolation. Past this screening view, siting in La Plata, Colorado turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for La Plata, Colorado traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources