Rains, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

FANNIN COUNTY ELECTRIC COOP, FARMERS ELECTRIC COOP, INC - (TX), ONCOR ELECTRIC DELIVERY COMPANY LLC, SOUTHWESTERN ELECTRIC POWER CO, TEXAS-NEW MEXICO POWER CO, TRINITY VALLEY ELEC COOP INC, UPSHUR RURAL ELEC COOP CORP, WOOD COUNTY ELECTRIC COOP, INC

ISO / market

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

3

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: 5.8 to 31.7¢/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

1 projects, 176 MW

Proposed generation

176 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

161,504 employed in construction within ~120 km (23 of 24 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 Rains

The sections below set out what public data shows about siting a large electrical load in Rains, Texas. At 345 kV, Rains carries high-voltage transmission at its strongest mapped point. Across Rains, Texas, the mapped layer holds just 3 substations, so options gather at a handful of places.

Wholesale activity over Rains clears through the ERCOT market (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), whose footprint sets how interconnection requests and capacity are handled. Rains carries the state industrial average retail rate of 6.5 cents per kWh from EIA-861, applied statewide. For Rains, the per-utility spread is 5 of 8 serving utilities: 5.8 to 31.7¢/kWh, which qualifies but never replaces the state average.

Rains carries 1 project in the interconnection queue, totalling 176.13 MW of requested capacity. In Rains, 176.1 MW is filed as planned or under construction in the federal EIA-860M inventory. In eGRID, the balancing authority over Rains shows 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh.

For Rains, the USGS 2015 compilation records 1.77 million gallons per day of all-use freshwater withdrawals, not water available to a new load. Rains sits within commuting range of roughly 161,504 construction workers (BLS QCEW, about 120 km), most already committed elsewhere.

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

Sources