Clay, IA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CITY OF BIGELOW - (MN), CITY OF SPENCER - (IA), FEDERATED RURAL ELECTRIC ASSN, INTERSTATE POWER AND LIGHT CO, IOWA LAKES ELECTRIC COOP, MIDAMERICAN ENERGY CO, NOBLES COOPERATIVE ELECTRIC, NORTH WEST RURAL ELECTRIC COOP, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

SPP (Southwest Power Pool)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

25

Industrial retail rate

7.2¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

5 of 9 serving utilities: 6.0 to 15.3¢/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

2 projects, 599 MW

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

982 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

13,889 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 Clay

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Clay, Iowa. At 345 kV, Clay carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Clay contains 25 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Clay clears through the SPP market (Southwest Power Pool), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Clay carries the state industrial average retail rate of 7.2 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Clay, the per-utility spread is 5 of 9 serving utilities: 6.0 to 15.3¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Clay carries 2 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 599.3 MW of requested capacity. The federal EIA-860M inventory files no planned or under-construction generation in Clay, Iowa, a real zero rather than a gap. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Clay shows 981.982 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Clay, the USGS 2015 compilation records 4.51 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Clay sits within commuting range of roughly 13,889 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

Every figure for Clay here is screening-grade and describes the county as a whole, not any single parcel within it. None of the figures for Clay, Iowa 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 Clay, Iowa requires a study of the specific parcel, a step beyond the county-level picture drawn here. Sources and data dates for Clay, Iowa are logged directly below, so each figure on this page can be traced back to its public dataset.

Sources