Imperial, CA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

ARIZONA PUBLIC SERVICE CO, COLORADO RIVER INDIAN IRR PROJ, IMPERIAL IRRIGATION DISTRICT, MCMULLEN VALLEY WATER C&D DIST, SAN DIEGO GAS & ELECTRIC CO, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON CO, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION, WELLTON-MOHAWK IRR & DRAIN DIST

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

500 kV

Substations in county

111

Industrial retail rate

21.6¢/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: 2.9 to 20.8¢/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

662 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

249 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

1,918 Mgal/dAll uses, freshwater. Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

77,031 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 Imperial

For Imperial, California, the following sections turn public grid records into a siting-oriented summary. The highest mapped voltage in Imperial is 500 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Imperial carries 111 substations, a dense footprint across the county.

No organized wholesale market covers Imperial, California, so capacity moves through the local utility and bilateral agreements. The state industrial average retail rate is 21.6 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Imperial at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Imperial that publish a rate range 4 of 8 serving utilities: 2.9 to 20.8¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

Imperial, California has nothing in the interconnection queue across the feeds covered here, quiet or uningested. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 661.8 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Imperial. Grid carbon intensity for Imperial, via its balancing authority, is 248.515 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Imperial at 1,918.32 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Imperial, about 77,031 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 Imperial figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Imperial, California 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 Imperial, California turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Imperial, California traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources