Sweet Grass, MT: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

BEARTOOTH ELECTRIC COOP, INC, FERGUS ELECTRIC COOP, INC, NORTHWESTERN ENERGY LLC - (MT), PARK ELECTRIC COOP INC

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

230 kV

Substations in county

13

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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

9,244 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 Sweet Grass

Read on for the public power picture of Sweet Grass in Montana, assembled for data center siting. Transmission-class access reaches 230 kV in Sweet Grass at its strongest mapped point. Sweet Grass contains 13 mapped substations, a moderate footprint spread across the service area.

No organized wholesale market covers Sweet Grass, Montana, so capacity moves through the local utility and bilateral agreements. Sweet Grass carries the state industrial average retail rate of 7.0 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Sweet Grass, the per-utility spread is 2 of 4 serving utilities: 1.8 to 14.6¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Sweet Grass, Montana shows no interconnection-queue project in the covered feeds, whether from real quiet or a feed not yet loaded. For Sweet Grass, Montana, the EIA-860M inventory shows no planned or under-construction generation, a measured absence. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Sweet Grass shows 1,583.022 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Sweet Grass, the USGS 2015 compilation records 258.57 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Sweet Grass sits within commuting range of roughly 9,244 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources