Brooks, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AEP TEXAS CENTRAL COMPANY, MAGIC VALLEY ELECTRIC COOP INC, MEDINA ELECTRIC COOP, INC, NUECES ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE, ONCOR ELECTRIC DELIVERY COMPANY LLC, SAN PATRICIO ELECTRIC COOP INC

ISO / market

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

2

Industrial retail rate

6.5¢/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: 7.5 to 24.7¢/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

4 projects, 879 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

734 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

28,876 employed in construction within ~120 km (7 of 11 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 Brooks

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Brooks, Texas. At 345 kV, Brooks carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Across Brooks, Texas, the mapped layer holds just 2 substations, so options gather at a handful of places.

Wholesale activity over Brooks clears through the ERCOT market (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Brooks carries the state industrial average retail rate of 6.5 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Brooks, the per-utility spread is 4 of 6 serving utilities: 7.5 to 24.7¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Brooks carries 4 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 879.37 MW of requested capacity. No generation is filed as planned or under construction in Brooks, Texas in the federal EIA-860M inventory, a measured zero rather than missing data. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Brooks shows 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Brooks, the USGS 2015 compilation records 1.87 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Brooks sits within commuting range of roughly 28,876 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

Every figure for Brooks here is screening-grade and describes the county as a whole, not any single parcel within it. None of the figures for Brooks, Texas 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 Brooks, Texas requires a study of the specific parcel, a step beyond the county-level picture drawn here. Sources and data dates for Brooks, Texas are logged directly below, so each figure on this page can be traced back to its public dataset.

Sources