Butte, SD: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

BLACK HILLS POWER, INC., BUTTE ELECTRIC COOP, INC, GRAND ELECTRIC COOP, INC, MONTANA-DAKOTA UTILITIES CO, SOUTHEAST ELECTRIC COOP, INC, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION, WEST RIVER ELECTRIC ASSN INC

ISO / market

SPP (Southwest Power Pool)

Highest grid access

115 kV

Substations in county

12

Industrial retail rate

8.7¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

4 of 7 serving utilities: 1.9 to 11.3¢/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

1,870 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

7,807 employed in construction within ~120 km (7 of 8 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 Butte

The material below frames Butte, South Dakota for a prospective large load, drawing only on public sources. At 115 kV, Butte sits in the transmission class that a large load would look to. The mapped layer places 12 substations across Butte, a moderate density.

Interconnection over Butte runs through the SPP market (Southwest Power Pool) and its rules. For Butte, the rate shown is the state industrial average of 8.7 cents per kWh (EIA-861), a state figure and not a county-specific one. Beneath that state average, the utilities serving Butte that report an industrial rate span 4 of 7 serving utilities: 1.9 to 11.3¢/kWh, shown as context and never as the county rate.

The covered queue feeds list nothing for Butte, South Dakota, which may be quiet or simply uningested. Nothing is on file for Butte, South Dakota in EIA-860M as planned or under construction, which counts as a measured zero. Butte sits under a balancing authority that eGRID puts at 1,869.537 lb CO2 per MWh.

Butte withdrew 6.12 million gallons per day for all uses in the USGS 2015 data, which counts demand, not headroom. About 7,807 people are employed in construction within a 120 km commute of Butte (BLS QCEW), which frames staffing distance rather than free labour.

For Butte, treat this as screening-grade county context useful for narrowing a search rather than settling a site. Taken together, the figures for Butte, South Dakota describe the grid around a prospective site, drawn from public data with their gaps left visible on purpose. To move past screening in Butte, South Dakota, a specific address needs its own interconnection study, which this page does not attempt. The figures for Butte, South Dakota refresh as their public datasets do, and the exact sources and dates sit in the source log below this section.

Sources