Amherst, VA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

APPALACHIAN POWER CO, BARC ELECTRIC COOP INC, CENTRAL VIRGINIA ELECTRIC COOP, VIRGINIA ELECTRIC & POWER CO

ISO / market

PJM (PJM Interconnection)

Highest grid access

138 kV

Substations in county

14

Industrial retail rate

9.4¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

3 of 4 serving utilities: 6.0 to 9.9¢/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

50 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

716 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

35,949 employed in construction within ~120 km (37 of 44 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 Amherst

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Amherst, Virginia. Transmission-class access reaches 138 kV in Amherst at its strongest mapped point. Amherst contains 14 mapped substations, a moderate footprint spread across the service area.

Wholesale activity over Amherst clears through the PJM market (PJM Interconnection), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Amherst carries the state industrial average retail rate of 9.4 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Amherst, the per-utility spread is 3 of 4 serving utilities: 6.0 to 9.9¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Amherst, Virginia has nothing in the interconnection queue across the feeds covered here, quiet or uningested. In Amherst, 50 MW is filed as planned or under construction in the federal EIA-860M inventory. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Amherst shows 716.09 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Amherst, the USGS 2015 compilation records 18.99 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Amherst sits within commuting range of roughly 35,949 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

Every figure for Amherst here is screening-grade and describes the county as a whole, not any single parcel within it. None of the figures for Amherst, Virginia 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 Amherst, Virginia requires a study of the specific parcel, a step beyond the county-level picture drawn here. Sources and data dates for Amherst, Virginia are logged directly below, so each figure on this page can be traced back to its public dataset.

Sources