Castro, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

BAILEY COUNTY ELEC COOP ASSN, DEAF SMITH ELECTRIC COOP, INC, FARMERS ELECTRIC COOP, INC - (NM), GREENBELT ELECTRIC COOP, INC, LAMB COUNTY ELECTRIC COOP, INC, LIGHTHOUSE ELECTRIC COOP, INC, SOUTH PLAINS ELECTRIC COOP INC, SOUTHWESTERN PUBLIC SERVICE CO, SWISHER ELECTRIC COOP, INC

ISO / market

SPP (Southwest Power Pool)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

18

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

7 of 9 serving utilities: 4.9 to 13.1¢/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

7 projects, 2,304 MW

Proposed generation

440 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

872 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

17,523 employed in construction within ~120 km (14 of 17 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 Castro

Read on for the public power picture of Castro in Texas, assembled for data center siting. At 345 kV, Castro carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Castro contains 18 mapped substations, a moderate footprint spread across the service area.

Wholesale activity over Castro clears through the SPP market (Southwest Power Pool), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Castro carries the state industrial average retail rate of 6.5 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Castro, the per-utility spread is 7 of 9 serving utilities: 4.9 to 13.1¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Castro carries 7 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 2,303.61 MW of requested capacity. In Castro, 440 MW is filed as planned or under construction in the federal EIA-860M inventory. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Castro shows 871.526 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Castro, the USGS 2015 compilation records 230.6 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Castro sits within commuting range of roughly 17,523 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources