Ward, ND: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

BASIN ELECTRIC POWER COOP, BURKE-DIVIDE ELECTRIC COOP INC, MCLEAN ELECTRIC COOP, INC, MONTANA-DAKOTA UTILITIES CO, MOUNTRAIL-WILLIAMS ELEC COOP, NORTHERN STATES POWER CO - MINNESOTA, OTTER TAIL POWER CO, VERENDRYE ELECTRIC COOP INC, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

SPP (Southwest Power Pool)

Highest grid access

230 kV

Substations in county

60

Industrial retail rate

7.5¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

9 serving utilities: 1.1 to 12.3¢/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

1 projects, 150 MW

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

872 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

3,109 employed in construction within ~120 kmA 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 Ward

Read on for the public power picture of Ward in North Dakota, assembled for data center siting. Transmission-class access reaches 230 kV in Ward at its strongest mapped point. Ward contains 60 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Ward clears through the SPP market (Southwest Power Pool), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Ward carries the state industrial average retail rate of 7.5 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Ward, the per-utility spread is 9 serving utilities: 1.1 to 12.3¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Ward carries 1 project in the interconnection queue, totalling 150 MW of requested capacity. For Ward, North Dakota, the EIA-860M inventory shows no planned or under-construction generation, a measured absence. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Ward shows 871.526 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Ward, the USGS 2015 compilation records 9.72 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Ward sits within commuting range of roughly 3,109 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources