Power by county
Wheatland, MT: data center power outlook
For Wheatland, Montana, the public grid picture begins with its place in an area outside an organized wholesale market and the infrastructure mapped inside the county. Grid access across Wheatland tops out at 500 kV, over a footprint of 18 mapped substations. In Wheatland, 2 utilities share the retail territory, among them FERGUS ELECTRIC COOP, INC, NORTHWESTERN ENERGY LLC - (MT).
Grid position at a glance
- Serving utilities
- FERGUS ELECTRIC COOP, INC, NORTHWESTERN ENERGY LLC - (MT)
- ISO / market
- NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)
- Highest grid access
- 500 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
- 2 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
- 80 MW planned or under constructionUnits 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
- 170 Mgal/dAll uses, freshwater. Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.
- Construction labor near site
- 1,270 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 Wheatland
This page gathers the public grid evidence for Wheatland, Montana that bears on a large new load. The highest mapped voltage in Wheatland is 500 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Wheatland carries 18 substations in the mapped layer, spread across the county.
No organized wholesale market covers Wheatland, 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 Wheatland at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Wheatland that publish a rate range 2 serving utilities: 1.8 to 14.6¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.
For Wheatland, Montana, no queued project appears in the feeds currently covered. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 80 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Wheatland. Grid carbon intensity for Wheatland, via its balancing authority, is 1,583.022 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.
USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Wheatland at 170.44 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Wheatland, about 1,270 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 Wheatland figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Wheatland, 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 Wheatland, Montana turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Wheatland, Montana traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.