Dickinson, IA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CITY OF BIGELOW - (MN), CITY OF LAKE PARK - (IA), CITY OF MILFORD - (IA), FEDERATED RURAL ELECTRIC ASSN, INTERSTATE POWER AND LIGHT CO, IOWA LAKES ELECTRIC COOP, NOBLES COOPERATIVE ELECTRIC, NORTH WEST RURAL ELECTRIC COOP, OSCEOLA ELECTRIC COOP, INC, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

SPP (Southwest Power Pool)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

33

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

4 of 10 serving utilities: 7.6 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

1 projects, 150 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

12,009 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 Dickinson

What follows is a screening-grade read of Dickinson, Iowa, built only from named public datasets. Grid access in Dickinson extends to 345 kV, a high-voltage line class. The mapped layer packs 33 substations into Dickinson, a dense spread of options.

Interconnection over Dickinson runs through the SPP market (Southwest Power Pool) and its rules. For Dickinson, the rate shown is the state industrial average of 7.2 cents per kWh (EIA-861), a state figure and not a county-specific one. Beneath that state average, the utilities serving Dickinson that report an industrial rate span 4 of 10 serving utilities: 7.6 to 15.3¢/kWh, shown as context and never as the county rate.

The queue feeds show 1 project for Dickinson, totalling 150 MW of requested capacity. EIA-860M lists nothing planned or under construction for Dickinson, Iowa, which is a national filing and so a real zero. Dickinson sits under a balancing authority that eGRID puts at 981.982 lb CO2 per MWh.

Dickinson withdrew 7.68 million gallons per day for all uses in the USGS 2015 data, which counts demand, not headroom. About 12,009 people are employed in construction within a 120 km commute of Dickinson (BLS QCEW), which frames staffing distance rather than free labour.

For Dickinson, treat this as screening-grade county context useful for narrowing a search rather than settling a site. Taken together, the figures for Dickinson, Iowa describe the grid around a prospective site, drawn from public data with their gaps left visible on purpose. To move past screening in Dickinson, Iowa, a specific address needs its own interconnection study, which this page does not attempt. The figures for Dickinson, Iowa refresh as their public datasets do, and the exact sources and dates sit in the source log below this section.

Sources