Louisa, IA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AMEREN ILLINOIS COMPANY, BOARD OF WATER ELECTRIC & COMMUNICATIONS, EASTERN IOWA LIGHT & POWER COOP, INTERSTATE POWER AND LIGHT CO, MIDAMERICAN ENERGY CO

ISO / market

MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

5

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 5 serving utilities: 6.0 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, 714 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

32,218 employed in construction within ~120 km (30 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 Louisa

For Louisa, Iowa, the following sections turn public grid records into a siting-oriented summary. The highest mapped voltage in Louisa is 345 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Louisa, Iowa shows 5 substations in the mapped layer, a thin spread across the county.

For Louisa, 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 Louisa at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Louisa that publish a rate range 4 of 5 serving utilities: 6.0 to 8.2¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

On record for Louisa are 4 interconnection-queue projects, totalling 714.1 MW of requested capacity. The federal EIA-860M inventory files no planned or under-construction generation in Louisa, Iowa, a real zero rather than a gap. Grid carbon intensity for Louisa, via its balancing authority, is 981.982 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Louisa at 13.36 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Louisa, about 32,218 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 Louisa figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Louisa, 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 Louisa, Iowa turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Louisa, Iowa traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources