Santa Barbara, CA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CITY OF LOMPOC - (CA), PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC CO., SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON CO

ISO / market

CAISO (California Independent System Operator)

Highest grid access

230 kV

Substations in county

42

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

2 of 3 serving utilities: 16.4 to 21.1¢/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

10 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

369 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

37,734 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 Santa Barbara

This page gathers the public grid evidence for Santa Barbara, California that bears on a large new load. The strongest mapped access in Santa Barbara is 230 kV, squarely transmission class. Santa Barbara carries 42 substations, a dense footprint across the county.

For Santa Barbara, the CAISO market (California Independent System Operator) is the operator that handles interconnection and capacity. The state industrial average retail rate is 21.6 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Santa Barbara at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Santa Barbara that publish a rate range 2 of 3 serving utilities: 16.4 to 21.1¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

Santa Barbara, California shows no interconnection-queue project in the covered feeds, whether from real quiet or a feed not yet loaded. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 9.8 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Santa Barbara. Grid carbon intensity for Santa Barbara, via its balancing authority, is 369.346 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Santa Barbara at 113.69 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Santa Barbara, about 37,734 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 Santa Barbara figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Santa Barbara, 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 Santa Barbara, California turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Santa Barbara, California traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources