Polk, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CENTERPOINT ENERGY, CITY OF LIVINGSTON - (TX), ENTERGY TEXAS INC., HOUSTON COUNTY ELEC COOP INC, JASPER-NEWTON ELEC COOP, INC, ONCOR ELECTRIC DELIVERY COMPANY LLC, SAM HOUSTON ELECTRIC COOP INC, SAM RAYBURN MUNICIPAL PWR AGNY

ISO / market

MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator)

Highest grid access

500 kV

Substations in county

15

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

4 of 8 serving utilities: 5.9 to 9.0¢/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, 1,325 MW

Proposed generation

170 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

982 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

196,163 employed in construction within ~120 km (18 of 20 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 Polk

This page gathers the public grid evidence for Polk, Texas that bears on a large new load. The highest mapped voltage in Polk is 500 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Polk carries 15 substations in the mapped layer, spread across the county.

For Polk, the MISO market (Midcontinent Independent System Operator) 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 Polk at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Polk that publish a rate range 4 of 8 serving utilities: 5.9 to 9.0¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

On record for Polk are 10 interconnection-queue projects, totalling 1,325 MW of requested capacity. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 170 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Polk. Grid carbon intensity for Polk, via its balancing authority, is 981.982 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Polk at 563.66 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Polk, about 196,163 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 Polk figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Polk, 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 Polk, Texas turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Polk, Texas traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources