Lee, IA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

ACCESS ENERGY COOP, AMEREN ILLINOIS COMPANY, EASTERN IOWA LIGHT & POWER COOP, INTERSTATE POWER AND LIGHT CO, LEWIS COUNTY RURAL E C A, UNION ELECTRIC CO - (MO), WEST POINT UTILITY SYSTEM, WESTERN ILLINOIS ELEC COOP

ISO / market

MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

11

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

3 of 8 serving utilities: 6.9 to 8.2¢/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

4 projects, 655 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

12,734 employed in construction within ~120 km (29 of 31 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 Lee

This page gathers the public grid evidence for Lee, Iowa that bears on a large new load. The highest mapped voltage in Lee is 345 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Lee carries 11 substations in the mapped layer, spread across the county.

For Lee, the MISO market (Midcontinent Independent System Operator) is the operator that handles interconnection and capacity. The state industrial average retail rate is 7.2 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Lee at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Lee that publish a rate range 3 of 8 serving utilities: 6.9 to 8.2¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

On record for Lee are 4 interconnection-queue projects, totalling 655 MW of requested capacity. The federal EIA-860M inventory files no planned or under-construction generation in Lee, Iowa, a real zero rather than a gap. Grid carbon intensity for Lee, via its balancing authority, is 981.982 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Lee at 29.07 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Lee, about 12,734 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 Lee figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Lee, Iowa 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 Lee, Iowa turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Lee, Iowa traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources