Golden Valley, MT: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

BEARTOOTH ELECTRIC COOP, INC, FERGUS ELECTRIC COOP, INC, NORTHWESTERN ENERGY LLC - (MT), WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

500 kV

Substations in county

15

Industrial retail rate

7.0¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

2 of 4 serving utilities: 1.8 to 14.6¢/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

None on record

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

1,583 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

7,291 employed in construction within ~120 km (6 of 9 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 Golden Valley

For Golden Valley, Montana, the following sections turn public grid records into a siting-oriented summary. The highest mapped voltage in Golden Valley is 500 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Golden Valley carries 15 substations in the mapped layer, spread across the county.

No organized wholesale market covers Golden Valley, Montana, so capacity moves through the local utility and bilateral agreements. The state industrial average retail rate is 7.0 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Golden Valley at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Golden Valley that publish a rate range 2 of 4 serving utilities: 1.8 to 14.6¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

Golden Valley, Montana shows no interconnection-queue project in the covered feeds, whether from real quiet or a feed not yet loaded. The federal EIA-860M inventory files no planned or under-construction generation in Golden Valley, Montana, a real zero rather than a gap. Grid carbon intensity for Golden Valley, via its balancing authority, is 1,583.022 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Golden Valley at 29.71 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Golden Valley, about 7,291 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 Golden Valley figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Golden Valley, Montana 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 Golden Valley, Montana turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Golden Valley, Montana traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources