Craighead, AR: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CITY WATER AND LIGHT PLANT, CRAIGHEAD ELECTRIC COOP CORP, ENTERGY ARKANSAS LLC, MISSISSIPPI COUNTY ELECTRIC CO, PEMISCOT-DUNKLIN ELEC COOP INC

ISO / market

MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator)

Highest grid access

500 kV

Substations in county

27

Industrial retail rate

6.7¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

4 of 5 serving utilities: 5.1 to 13.7¢/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

17 projects, 3,977 MW

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

518 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

30,445 employed in construction within ~120 km (23 of 27 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 Craighead

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Craighead, Arkansas. At 500 kV, Craighead carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Craighead contains 27 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Craighead clears through the MISO market (Midcontinent Independent System Operator), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Craighead carries the state industrial average retail rate of 6.7 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Craighead, the per-utility spread is 4 of 5 serving utilities: 5.1 to 13.7¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Craighead carries 17 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 3,977 MW of requested capacity. The federal EIA-860M inventory files no planned or under-construction generation in Craighead, Arkansas, a real zero rather than a gap. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Craighead shows 518.094 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Craighead, the USGS 2015 compilation records 510.86 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Craighead sits within commuting range of roughly 30,445 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources