Wichita, TX: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AEP TEXAS NORTH COMPANY, CITY OF ELECTRA - (TX), COTTON ELECTRIC COOP, INC, FORT BELKNAP ELECTRIC COOP INC, J-A-C ELECTRIC COOP INC, ONCOR ELECTRIC DELIVERY COMPANY LLC, PUBLIC SERVICE CO OF OKLAHOMA, SOUTHWEST RURAL ELEC ASSN INC, SOUTHWESTERN PUBLIC SERVICE CO, TEXAS-NEW MEXICO POWER CO, TRI-COUNTY ELECTRIC COOP, INC (TX), WISE ELECTRIC COOP INC

ISO / market

SPP (Southwest Power Pool)

Highest grid access

345 kV

Substations in county

49

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

2 of 12 serving utilities: 4.9 to 14.0¢/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

13 projects, 2,571 MW

Proposed generation

606 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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.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

5,485 employed in construction within ~120 km (12 of 19 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 Wichita

This page gathers the public grid evidence for Wichita, Texas that bears on a large new load. The highest mapped voltage in Wichita is 345 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Wichita carries 49 substations, a dense footprint across the county.

For Wichita, the SPP market (Southwest Power Pool) 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 Wichita at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Wichita that publish a rate range 2 of 12 serving utilities: 4.9 to 14.0¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

On record for Wichita are 13 interconnection-queue projects, totalling 2,571.25 MW of requested capacity. Federal filings (EIA-860M) list 606.4 MW of generation as planned or under construction in Wichita. Grid carbon intensity for Wichita, via its balancing authority, is 734.003 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Wichita at 12.72 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Wichita, about 5,485 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 Wichita figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Wichita, 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 Wichita, Texas turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Wichita, Texas traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources