Musselshell, MT: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

FERGUS ELECTRIC COOP, INC, MID-YELLOWSTONE ELEC COOP, INC, NORTHWESTERN ENERGY LLC - (MT), WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION, YELLOWSTONE VALLEY ELEC CO-OP

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

115 kV

Substations in county

18

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

3 of 5 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

6,674 employed in construction within ~120 km (3 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 Musselshell

What follows is a screening-grade read of Musselshell, Montana, built only from named public datasets. At 115 kV, Musselshell sits in the transmission class that a large load would look to. The mapped layer places 18 substations across Musselshell, a moderate density.

Sitting outside any organized market, Musselshell, Montana handles interconnection through its utility rather than a central operator. For Musselshell, the rate shown is the state industrial average of 7.0 cents per kWh (EIA-861), a state figure and not a county-specific one. Beneath that state average, the utilities serving Musselshell that report an industrial rate span 3 of 5 serving utilities: 1.8 to 14.6¢/kWh, shown as context and never as the county rate.

Across the covered feeds, Musselshell, Montana carries no interconnection-queue project, from either real quiet or a feed not yet loaded. EIA-860M lists nothing planned or under construction for Musselshell, Montana, which is a national filing and so a real zero. Musselshell sits under a balancing authority that eGRID puts at 1,583.022 lb CO2 per MWh.

Musselshell withdrew 73.07 million gallons per day for all uses in the USGS 2015 data, which counts demand, not headroom. About 6,674 people are employed in construction within a 120 km commute of Musselshell (BLS QCEW), which frames staffing distance rather than free labour.

For Musselshell, treat this as screening-grade county context useful for narrowing a search rather than settling a site. Taken together, the figures for Musselshell, Montana describe the grid around a prospective site, drawn from public data with their gaps left visible on purpose. To move past screening in Musselshell, Montana, a specific address needs its own interconnection study, which this page does not attempt. The figures for Musselshell, Montana refresh as their public datasets do, and the exact sources and dates sit in the source log below this section.

Sources