Harris, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CENTERPOINT ENERGY, CITY OF HEMPSTEAD - (TX), ENTERGY TEXAS INC., JACKSON ELECTRIC COOP, INC - (TX), MID-SOUTH ELECTRIC COOP ASSN, SAM HOUSTON ELECTRIC COOP INC, SAM RAYBURN MUNICIPAL PWR AGNY, SAN BERNARD ELECTRIC COOP, INC, TEXAS-NEW MEXICO POWER CO

ISO / market

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

386

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

5 of 9 serving utilities: 5.9 to 9.0¢/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

32 projects, 7,192 MW

Proposed generation

967 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

734 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

233,299 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 Harris

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Harris, Texas. At 345 kV, Harris carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Harris contains 386 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Harris clears through the ERCOT market (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Harris carries the state industrial average retail rate of 6.5 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Harris, the per-utility spread is 5 of 9 serving utilities: 5.9 to 9.0¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Harris carries 32 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 7,192.19 MW of requested capacity. In Harris, 966.8 MW is filed as planned or under construction in the federal EIA-860M inventory. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Harris shows 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Harris, the USGS 2015 compilation records 315.8 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Harris sits within commuting range of roughly 233,299 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources