Pocahontas, IA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CALHOUN COUNTY ELEC COOP ASSN, CITY OF FONDA - (IA), CITY OF LAURENS - (IA), CITY OF POCAHONTAS - (IA), FEDERATED RURAL ELECTRIC ASSN, INTERSTATE POWER AND LIGHT CO, IOWA LAKES ELECTRIC COOP, MIDAMERICAN ENERGY CO, MIDLAND POWER COOP

ISO / market

SPP (Southwest Power Pool)

Highest grid access

161 kV

Substations in county

8

Industrial retail rate

7.2¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

5 of 9 serving utilities: 6.0 to 15.3¢/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

3 projects, 631 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

982 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

11,733 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 Pocahontas

For Pocahontas, Iowa, the following sections turn public grid records into a siting-oriented summary. The strongest mapped access in Pocahontas is 161 kV, squarely transmission class. Pocahontas carries 8 substations in the mapped layer, spread across the county.

For Pocahontas, the SPP market (Southwest Power Pool) is the operator that handles interconnection and capacity. The state industrial average retail rate is 7.2 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Pocahontas at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Pocahontas that publish a rate range 5 of 9 serving utilities: 6.0 to 15.3¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

On record for Pocahontas are 3 interconnection-queue projects, totalling 631.3 MW of requested capacity. The federal EIA-860M inventory files no planned or under-construction generation in Pocahontas, Iowa, a real zero rather than a gap. Grid carbon intensity for Pocahontas, via its balancing authority, is 981.982 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Pocahontas at 2.23 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Pocahontas, about 11,733 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 Pocahontas figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Pocahontas, Iowa 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 Pocahontas, Iowa turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Pocahontas, Iowa traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources