McCone, MT: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

LOWER YELLOWSTONE R E A, INC, MCCONE ELECTRIC COOP INC, MONTANA-DAKOTA UTILITIES CO, NORVAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE, INC, SHERIDAN ELECTRIC COOP, INC, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

230 kV

Substations in county

11

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 6 serving utilities: 8.3 to 10.2¢/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

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

0 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

881 employed in construction within ~120 km (5 of 7 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 McCone

This page gathers the public grid evidence for McCone, Montana that bears on a large new load. The strongest mapped access in McCone is 230 kV, squarely transmission class. McCone carries 11 substations in the mapped layer, spread across the county.

No organized wholesale market covers McCone, 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 McCone at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in McCone that publish a rate range 2 of 6 serving utilities: 8.3 to 10.2¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

For McCone, Montana, no queued project appears in the feeds currently covered. For McCone, Montana, the EIA-860M inventory shows no planned or under-construction generation, a measured absence. Grid carbon intensity for McCone, via its balancing authority, is 0 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across McCone at 32.24 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of McCone, about 881 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 McCone figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for McCone, 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 McCone, Montana turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for McCone, Montana traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources