Essex, NJ: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

JERSEY CENTRAL POWER & LT CO, PUBLIC SERVICE ELEC & GAS CO

ISO / market

PJM (PJM Interconnection)

Highest grid access

500 kV

Substations in county

44

Industrial retail rate

13.9¢/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: 4.0 to 6.2¢/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

716 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

491,943 employed in construction within ~120 km (36 of 37 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 Essex

Read on for the public power picture of Essex in New Jersey, assembled for data center siting. At 500 kV, Essex carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Essex contains 44 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Essex clears through the PJM market (PJM Interconnection), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Essex carries the state industrial average retail rate of 13.9 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Essex, the per-utility spread is 2 serving utilities: 4.0 to 6.2¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Essex, New Jersey 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 Essex, New Jersey in the federal EIA-860M inventory, a measured zero rather than missing data. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Essex shows 716.09 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Essex, the USGS 2015 compilation records 33.6 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Essex sits within commuting range of roughly 491,943 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources