Thomas, KS: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CITY OF COLBY - (KS), LANE-SCOTT ELECTRIC COOP, INC, MIDWEST ENERGY INC, PRAIRIE LAND ELECTRIC COOP INC, WESTERN COOP ELECTRIC ASSN INC, WHEATLAND ELECTRIC COOP, INC

ISO / market

SPP (Southwest Power Pool)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

10

Industrial retail rate

8.0¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

4 of 6 serving utilities: 7.6 to 13.3¢/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

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

872 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

916 employed in construction within ~120 km (13 of 19 counties reporting)A 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 Thomas

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Thomas, Kansas. At 345 kV, Thomas carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Thomas contains 10 mapped substations, a moderate footprint spread across the service area.

Wholesale activity over Thomas clears through the SPP market (Southwest Power Pool), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Thomas carries the state industrial average retail rate of 8.0 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Thomas, the per-utility spread is 4 of 6 serving utilities: 7.6 to 13.3¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Thomas, Kansas has nothing in the interconnection queue across the feeds covered here, quiet or uningested. For Thomas, Kansas, the EIA-860M inventory shows no planned or under-construction generation, a measured absence. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Thomas shows 871.526 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Thomas, the USGS 2015 compilation records 85.93 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Thomas sits within commuting range of roughly 916 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

Every figure for Thomas here is screening-grade and describes the county as a whole, not any single parcel within it. None of the figures for Thomas, Kansas settles a site on its own; each one qualifies the others, and all of them come from public federal and state datasets. Settling a site in Thomas, Kansas requires a study of the specific parcel, a step beyond the county-level picture drawn here. Sources and data dates for Thomas, Kansas are logged directly below, so each figure on this page can be traced back to its public dataset.

Sources