Starr, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AEP TEXAS CENTRAL COMPANY, MAGIC VALLEY ELECTRIC COOP INC, MEDINA ELECTRIC COOP, INC, NUECES ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE, ONCOR ELECTRIC DELIVERY COMPANY LLC

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

3 of 5 serving utilities: 7.5 to 24.7¢/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

18 projects, 4,265 MW

Proposed generation

880 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

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

8,654 employed in construction within ~120 km (3 of 6 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 Starr

This page gathers the public grid evidence for Starr, Texas that bears on a large new load. The highest mapped voltage in Starr is 345 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Starr carries 14 substations in the mapped layer, spread across the county.

For Starr, the ERCOT market (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) is the operator that handles interconnection and capacity. The state industrial average retail rate is 6.5 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Starr at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Starr that publish a rate range 3 of 5 serving utilities: 7.5 to 24.7¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

On record for Starr are 18 interconnection-queue projects, totalling 4,264.64 MW of requested capacity. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 880 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Starr. Grid carbon intensity for Starr, via its balancing authority, is 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Starr at 13.3 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Starr, about 8,654 people are employed in construction (BLS QCEW), which speaks to how far crews for a multi-year build would travel, not to labour known to be free.

Read the Starr figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Starr, Texas qualify one another, so grid access, substation density, market membership, and rate are meant to be read as a set, not in isolation. Past this screening view, siting in Starr, Texas turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Starr, Texas traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources