Montgomery, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CENTERPOINT ENERGY, CITY OF HEMPSTEAD - (TX), ENTERGY TEXAS INC., HOUSTON COUNTY ELEC COOP INC, MID-SOUTH ELECTRIC COOP ASSN, SAM HOUSTON ELECTRIC COOP INC, SAM RAYBURN MUNICIPAL PWR AGNY, SAN BERNARD ELECTRIC COOP, INC

ISO / market

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

48

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 8 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

4 projects, 623 MW

Proposed generation

615 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

982 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

224,776 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 Montgomery

Read on for the public power picture of Montgomery in Texas, assembled for data center siting. At 345 kV, Montgomery carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Montgomery contains 48 mapped substations, a dense footprint that spreads interconnection options across many points.

Wholesale activity over Montgomery clears through the ERCOT market (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Montgomery carries the state industrial average retail rate of 6.5 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Montgomery, the per-utility spread is 5 of 8 serving utilities: 5.9 to 9.0¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Montgomery carries 4 projects in the interconnection queue, totalling 622.96 MW of requested capacity. In Montgomery, 614.9 MW is filed as planned or under construction in the federal EIA-860M inventory. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Montgomery shows 981.982 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Montgomery, the USGS 2015 compilation records 67.69 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Montgomery sits within commuting range of roughly 224,776 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources