Denver, CO: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

PUBLIC SERVICE CO OF COLORADO, UNITED POWER, INC, WAPA-- WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

230 kV

Substations in county

25

Industrial retail rate

9.1¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

3 serving utilities: 2.6 to 9.5¢/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

803 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

159,249 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 Denver

The material below frames Denver, Colorado for a prospective large load, drawing only on public sources. At 230 kV, Denver sits in the transmission class that a large load would look to. The mapped layer packs 25 substations into Denver, a dense spread of options.

Because Denver, Colorado sits outside an organized market, capacity and interconnection are handled by the utility and bilateral deals, not a market operator. For Denver, the rate shown is the state industrial average of 9.1 cents per kWh (EIA-861), a state figure and not a county-specific one. Beneath that state average, the utilities serving Denver that report an industrial rate span 3 serving utilities: 2.6 to 9.5¢/kWh, shown as context and never as the county rate.

Across the covered feeds, Denver, Colorado carries no interconnection-queue project, from either real quiet or a feed not yet loaded. Nothing is on file for Denver, Colorado in EIA-860M as planned or under construction, which counts as a measured zero. Denver sits under a balancing authority that eGRID puts at 802.655 lb CO2 per MWh.

Denver withdrew 164.8 million gallons per day for all uses in the USGS 2015 data, which counts demand, not headroom. About 159,249 people are employed in construction within a 120 km commute of Denver (BLS QCEW), which frames staffing distance rather than free labour.

For Denver, treat this as screening-grade county context useful for narrowing a search rather than settling a site. Taken together, the figures for Denver, Colorado describe the grid around a prospective site, drawn from public data with their gaps left visible on purpose. To move past screening in Denver, Colorado, a specific address needs its own interconnection study, which this page does not attempt. The figures for Denver, Colorado refresh as their public datasets do, and the exact sources and dates sit in the source log below this section.

Sources