Hays, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AEP TEXAS CENTRAL COMPANY, AUSTIN ENERGY, BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOP, INC, CENTRAL TEXAS ELEC COOP, INC, CITY OF SAN MARCOS - (TX), GUADALUPE VALLEY ELEC COOP INC, PEDERNALES ELECTRIC COOP, INC

ISO / market

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

24

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

6 of 7 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

5 projects, 147 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

156,961 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 Hays

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Hays, Texas. At 345 kV, Hays carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Hays contains 24 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Hays clears through the ERCOT market (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Hays carries the state industrial average retail rate of 6.5 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Hays, the per-utility spread is 6 of 7 serving utilities: 5.4 to 10.2¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Hays carries 5 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 147.38 MW of requested capacity. No generation is filed as planned or under construction in Hays, Texas in the federal EIA-860M inventory, a measured zero rather than missing data. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Hays shows 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Hays, the USGS 2015 compilation records 13.38 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Hays sits within commuting range of roughly 156,961 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources