San Francisco, CA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

ALAMEDA MUNICIPAL POWER, CITY & COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC CO., WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

CAISO (California Independent System Operator)

Highest grid access

230 kV

Substations in county

12

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

3 of 4 serving utilities: 2.9 to 23.7¢/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

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

369 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

231,227 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 San Francisco

Everything here about San Francisco, California comes from public federal and state records, with the gaps left visible. San Francisco reaches 230 kV at its highest mapped voltage, a transmission class that can carry a substantial interconnection where capacity exists. With 12 substations mapped, San Francisco has a moderate spread of interconnection points.

San Francisco falls inside the CAISO market (California Independent System Operator), which governs how its interconnection requests and capacity move. The rate for San Francisco is the 21.6 cents per kWh state industrial average (EIA-861), the same figure the map colours by. Across San Francisco, reported per-utility industrial rates cover 3 of 4 serving utilities: 2.9 to 23.7¢/kWh, offered only as context beneath the state figure.

No interconnection-queue project is on record for San Francisco, California in the covered feeds, which reflects either genuine quiet or a queue not yet ingested. Nothing is on file for San Francisco, California in EIA-860M as planned or under construction, which counts as a measured zero. The balancing authority covering San Francisco carries a grid carbon intensity of 369.346 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

Reported freshwater withdrawals for all uses in San Francisco are 68.33 million gallons per day in the USGS 2015 compilation, existing demand rather than water free for a new load. Around San Francisco, some 231,227 people work in construction within about a 120 km commute (BLS QCEW), a measure of reach, not of available crews.

These numbers for San Francisco are screening-grade context for the whole county, drawn from public data with the gaps left visible. Read the figures for San Francisco, California together rather than one at a time: grid access matters less without substations near it, and a quiet queue reads differently inside an organized market than outside one. The next step for San Francisco, California is an address-level interconnection study; the county figures here only narrow where to look. For San Francisco, California, the source log below records where each figure comes from and when it was pulled, keeping the provenance visible.

Sources