Walker, AL: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

ALABAMA POWER CO, CULLMAN ELECTRIC COOP, INC, CULLMAN POWER BOARD, TOMBIGBEE ELECTRIC COOP, INC

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

500 kV

Substations in county

82

Industrial retail rate

7.7¢/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: 8.0 to 9.6¢/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

843 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

52,586 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 Walker

Read on for the public power picture of Walker in Alabama, assembled for data center siting. At 500 kV, Walker carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Walker contains 82 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Walker, Alabama lies outside an organized wholesale market, so generation and transmission are arranged bilaterally and through the local utility rather than a central market operator. Walker carries the state industrial average retail rate of 7.7 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Walker, the per-utility spread is 3 of 4 serving utilities: 8.0 to 9.6¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

For Walker, Alabama, no queued project appears in the feeds currently covered. No generation is filed as planned or under construction in Walker, Alabama in the federal EIA-860M inventory, a measured zero rather than missing data. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Walker shows 842.741 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Walker, the USGS 2015 compilation records 710.17 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Walker sits within commuting range of roughly 52,586 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources