Gonzales, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AEP TEXAS CENTRAL COMPANY, BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOP, INC, CITY OF GONZALES - (TX), CITY OF WAELDER - (TX), FAYETTE ELECTRIC COOP, INC, GUADALUPE VALLEY ELEC COOP INC, JACKSON ELECTRIC COOP, INC - (TX), KARNES ELECTRIC COOP INC, PEDERNALES ELECTRIC COOP, INC, SAN BERNARD ELECTRIC COOP, INC, VICTORIA ELECTRIC COOP, INC

ISO / market

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

14

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

8 of 11 serving utilities: 5.4 to 10.2¢/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

8 projects, 1,235 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

134,016 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 Gonzales

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Gonzales, Texas. At 345 kV, Gonzales carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Gonzales contains 14 mapped substations, a moderate footprint spread across the service area.

Wholesale activity over Gonzales clears through the ERCOT market (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Gonzales carries the state industrial average retail rate of 6.5 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Gonzales, the per-utility spread is 8 of 11 serving utilities: 5.4 to 10.2¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Gonzales carries 8 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 1,235.36 MW of requested capacity. For Gonzales, Texas, the EIA-860M inventory shows no planned or under-construction generation, a measured absence. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Gonzales shows 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Gonzales, the USGS 2015 compilation records 43.47 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Gonzales sits within commuting range of roughly 134,016 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources