El Paso, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

EL PASO ELECTRIC CO, RIO GRANDE ELECTRIC COOP, INC

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

63

Industrial retail rate

6.5¢/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: 4.6 to 10.2¢/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

500 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

1,011 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

21,086 employed in construction within ~120 km (3 of 4 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 El Paso

The material below frames El Paso, Texas for a prospective large load, drawing only on public sources. Grid access in El Paso extends to 345 kV, a high-voltage line class. The mapped layer packs 63 substations into El Paso, a dense spread of options.

El Paso, Texas is not inside an organized market, which leaves interconnection to the utility and bilateral contracts. For El Paso, the rate shown is the state industrial average of 6.5 cents per kWh (EIA-861), a state figure and not a county-specific one. Beneath that state average, the utilities serving El Paso that report an industrial rate span 2 serving utilities: 4.6 to 10.2¢/kWh, shown as context and never as the county rate.

Across the covered feeds, El Paso, Texas carries no interconnection-queue project, from either real quiet or a feed not yet loaded. EIA-860M records 500 MW planned or under construction for El Paso. El Paso sits under a balancing authority that eGRID puts at 1,010.691 lb CO2 per MWh.

El Paso withdrew 237.95 million gallons per day for all uses in the USGS 2015 data, which counts demand, not headroom. About 21,086 people are employed in construction within a 120 km commute of El Paso (BLS QCEW), which frames staffing distance rather than free labour.

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

Sources