Houston, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CHEROKEE COUNTY ELEC COOP ASSN, ENTERGY TEXAS INC., HOUSTON COUNTY ELEC COOP INC, JASPER-NEWTON ELEC COOP, INC, LYNTEGAR ELECTRIC COOP, INC, MID-SOUTH ELECTRIC COOP ASSN, NAVASOTA VALLEY ELEC COOP, INC, ONCOR ELECTRIC DELIVERY COMPANY LLC, SAM HOUSTON ELECTRIC COOP INC, TRINITY VALLEY ELEC COOP INC

ISO / market

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

7

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

9 of 10 serving utilities: 5.6 to 9.2¢/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

10 projects, 2,379 MW

Proposed generation

125 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

33,459 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 Houston

For Houston, Texas, the following sections turn public grid records into a siting-oriented summary. The highest mapped voltage in Houston is 345 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Houston carries 7 substations in the mapped layer, spread across the county.

For Houston, 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 Houston at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Houston that publish a rate range 9 of 10 serving utilities: 5.6 to 9.2¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

On record for Houston are 10 interconnection-queue projects, totalling 2,378.78 MW of requested capacity. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 125 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Houston. Grid carbon intensity for Houston, via its balancing authority, is 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Houston at 5.14 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Houston, about 33,459 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 Houston figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Houston, 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 Houston, Texas turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Houston, Texas traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources