Fort Bend, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AEP TEXAS CENTRAL COMPANY, BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOP, INC, CENTERPOINT ENERGY, CITY OF HEMPSTEAD - (TX), ENTERGY TEXAS INC., FAYETTE ELECTRIC COOP, INC, JACKSON ELECTRIC COOP, INC - (TX), MID-SOUTH ELECTRIC COOP ASSN, SAN BERNARD ELECTRIC COOP, INC, TEXAS-NEW MEXICO POWER CO, WHARTON COUNTY ELEC COOP, INC

ISO / market

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

37

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

7 of 11 serving utilities: 5.9 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

11 projects, 2,008 MW

Proposed generation

360 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

734 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

229,687 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 Fort Bend

This page gathers the public grid evidence for Fort Bend, Texas that bears on a large new load. The highest mapped voltage in Fort Bend is 345 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Fort Bend carries 37 substations, a dense footprint across the county.

For Fort Bend, the ERCOT market (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) is the operator that handles interconnection and capacity. The state industrial average retail rate is 6.5 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Fort Bend at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Fort Bend that publish a rate range 7 of 11 serving utilities: 5.9 to 10.2¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

On record for Fort Bend are 11 interconnection-queue projects, totalling 2,007.84 MW of requested capacity. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 360 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Fort Bend. Grid carbon intensity for Fort Bend, via its balancing authority, is 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Fort Bend at 886.79 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Fort Bend, about 229,687 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 Fort Bend figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Fort Bend, Texas 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 Fort Bend, Texas turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Fort Bend, Texas traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources