Highlands, FL: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

DUKE ENERGY FLORIDA, LLC, FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT CO, GLADES ELECTRIC COOP, INC, PEACE RIVER ELECTRIC COOP, INC

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

230 kV

Substations in county

32

Industrial retail rate

8.8¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

4 serving utilities: 8.0 to 22.9¢/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

150 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

969 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

222,409 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 Highlands

For Highlands, Florida, the following sections turn public grid records into a siting-oriented summary. The strongest mapped access in Highlands is 230 kV, squarely transmission class. Highlands carries 32 substations, a dense footprint across the county.

No organized wholesale market covers Highlands, Florida, so capacity moves through the local utility and bilateral agreements. The state industrial average retail rate is 8.8 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Highlands at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Highlands that publish a rate range 4 serving utilities: 8.0 to 22.9¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

For Highlands, Florida, no queued project appears in the feeds currently covered. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 149.8 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Highlands. Grid carbon intensity for Highlands, via its balancing authority, is 969.112 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Highlands at 93.07 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Highlands, about 222,409 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 Highlands figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Highlands, Florida 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 Highlands, Florida turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Highlands, Florida traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources