Valley, MT: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

BIG FLAT ELECTRIC COOP INC, MCCONE ELECTRIC COOP INC, MONTANA-DAKOTA UTILITIES CO, NORTHWESTERN ENERGY LLC - (MT), NORVAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE, INC, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

SPP (Southwest Power Pool)

Highest grid access

230 kV

Substations in county

40

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: 1.8 to 8.3¢/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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

220 employed in construction within ~120 km (4 of 6 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 Valley

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Valley, Montana. Transmission-class access reaches 230 kV in Valley at its strongest mapped point. Valley contains 40 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Valley clears through the SPP market (Southwest Power Pool), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Valley carries the state industrial average retail rate of 7.0 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Valley, the per-utility spread is 2 of 6 serving utilities: 1.8 to 8.3¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Valley, Montana shows no interconnection-queue project in the covered feeds, whether from real quiet or a feed not yet loaded. No generation is filed as planned or under construction in Valley, Montana in the federal EIA-860M inventory, a measured zero rather than missing data. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Valley shows 0 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Valley, the USGS 2015 compilation records 246.93 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Valley sits within commuting range of roughly 220 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources