Salem, VA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

APPALACHIAN POWER CO, CITY OF SALEM - (VA), CRAIG-BOTETOURT ELECTRIC COOP

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

2 of 3 serving utilities: 9.9 to 12.9¢/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

None on file (EIA-860M)Units 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

30,780 employed in construction within ~120 km (33 of 43 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 Salem

For Salem, Virginia, the following sections turn public grid records into a siting-oriented summary. The strongest mapped access in Salem is 138 kV, squarely transmission class. Salem carries 14 substations in the mapped layer, spread across the county.

For Salem, the PJM market (PJM Interconnection) is the operator that handles interconnection and capacity. The state industrial average retail rate is 9.4 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Salem at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Salem that publish a rate range 2 of 3 serving utilities: 9.9 to 12.9¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

Salem, Virginia has nothing in the interconnection queue across the feeds covered here, quiet or uningested. The federal EIA-860M inventory files no planned or under-construction generation in Salem, Virginia, a real zero rather than a gap. Grid carbon intensity for Salem, via its balancing authority, is 716.09 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Salem at 3.92 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Salem, about 30,780 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 Salem figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Salem, Virginia 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 Salem, Virginia turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Salem, Virginia traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources