Howard, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AEP TEXAS NORTH COMPANY, BIG COUNTRY ELECTRIC COOP, INC, CONCHO VALLEY ELEC COOP INC, LYNTEGAR ELECTRIC COOP, INC, ONCOR ELECTRIC DELIVERY COMPANY LLC, SOUTHWESTERN PUBLIC SERVICE CO, TAYLOR ELECTRIC COOP INC - (TX)

ISO / market

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

28

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

5 of 7 serving utilities: 4.9 to 11.8¢/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

14 projects, 2,480 MW

Proposed generation

200 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

18,945 employed in construction within ~120 km (10 of 19 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 Howard

Read on for the public power picture of Howard in Texas, assembled for data center siting. At 345 kV, Howard carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Howard contains 28 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Howard clears through the ERCOT market (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Howard carries the state industrial average retail rate of 6.5 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Howard, the per-utility spread is 5 of 7 serving utilities: 4.9 to 11.8¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Howard carries 14 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 2,479.62 MW of requested capacity. In Howard, 200 MW is filed as planned or under construction in the federal EIA-860M inventory. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Howard shows 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Howard, the USGS 2015 compilation records 6.13 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Howard sits within commuting range of roughly 18,945 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

Every figure for Howard here is screening-grade and describes the county as a whole, not any single parcel within it. None of the figures for Howard, Texas settles a site on its own; each one qualifies the others, and all of them come from public federal and state datasets. Settling a site in Howard, Texas requires a study of the specific parcel, a step beyond the county-level picture drawn here. Sources and data dates for Howard, Texas are logged directly below, so each figure on this page can be traced back to its public dataset.

Sources