Muscatine, IA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AMEREN ILLINOIS COMPANY, BOARD OF WATER ELECTRIC & COMMUNICATIONS, CITY OF BUFFALO - (IA), CITY OF DURANT - (IA), CITY OF WEST LIBERTY - (IA), CITY OF WILTON, 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

28

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 9 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

5 projects, 579 MW

Proposed generation

59 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

982 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

35,478 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 Muscatine

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Muscatine, Iowa. At 345 kV, Muscatine carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Muscatine contains 28 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Muscatine clears through the MISO market (Midcontinent Independent System Operator), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Muscatine carries the state industrial average retail rate of 7.2 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Muscatine, the per-utility spread is 4 of 9 serving utilities: 6.0 to 8.2¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Muscatine carries 5 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 579.4 MW of requested capacity. In Muscatine, 59 MW is filed as planned or under construction in the federal EIA-860M inventory. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Muscatine shows 981.982 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Muscatine, the USGS 2015 compilation records 173.82 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Muscatine sits within commuting range of roughly 35,478 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources