Berkeley, SC: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

BERKELEY ELECTRIC COOP INC, DOMINION ENERGY SOUTH CAROLINA, INC, DUKE ENERGY PROGRESS - (NC), EDISTO ELECTRIC COOP, INC, SANTEE ELECTRIC COOP, INC, SOUTH CAROLINA PUBLIC SERVICE AUTHORITY

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

230 kV

Substations in county

92

Industrial retail rate

7.1¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

6 serving utilities: 5.1 to 10.9¢/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

300 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

1,678 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

35,791 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 Berkeley

This page gathers the public grid evidence for Berkeley, South Carolina that bears on a large new load. The strongest mapped access in Berkeley is 230 kV, squarely transmission class. Berkeley carries 92 substations, a dense footprint across the county.

No organized wholesale market covers Berkeley, South Carolina, so capacity moves through the local utility and bilateral agreements. The state industrial average retail rate is 7.1 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Berkeley at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Berkeley that publish a rate range 6 serving utilities: 5.1 to 10.9¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

Berkeley, South Carolina has nothing in the interconnection queue across the feeds covered here, quiet or uningested. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 300 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Berkeley. Grid carbon intensity for Berkeley, via its balancing authority, is 1,678.22 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Berkeley at 513.97 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Berkeley, about 35,791 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 Berkeley figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Berkeley, South Carolina 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 Berkeley, South Carolina turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Berkeley, South Carolina traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources