Power by county

Fairfax, VA: data center power outlook

Fairfax, Virginia is served through the PJM market (PJM Interconnection), and the figures below describe the public grid around a prospective data center site there. Fairfax carries 62 mapped substations within its boundary, and the highest reachable grid access is 500 kV. Service in Fairfax spans 4 utilities, with NORTHERN VIRGINIA ELEC COOP, POTOMAC ELECTRIC POWER CO, SOUTHERN MARYLAND ELEC COOP INC among those mapped.

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities
NORTHERN VIRGINIA ELEC COOP, POTOMAC ELECTRIC POWER CO, SOUTHERN MARYLAND ELEC COOP INC, VIRGINIA ELECTRIC & POWER CO
ISO / market
PJM (PJM Interconnection)
Highest grid access
500 kV
Substations in county
62
Industrial retail rate
9.4¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.
Per-utility rates in county
2 of 4 serving utilities: 6.0 to 7.4¢/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
None on record
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
716 lb CO2/MWh
Water withdrawals
1.4 Mgal/dAll uses, freshwater. Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.
Construction labor near site
257,651 employed in construction within ~120 km (49 of 51 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 Fairfax

The material below frames Fairfax, Virginia for a prospective large load, drawing only on public sources. Grid access in Fairfax extends to 500 kV, a high-voltage line class. The mapped layer packs 62 substations into Fairfax, a dense spread of options.

Interconnection over Fairfax runs through the PJM market (PJM Interconnection) and its rules. For Fairfax, the rate shown is the state industrial average of 9.4 cents per kWh (EIA-861), a state figure and not a county-specific one. Beneath that state average, the utilities serving Fairfax that report an industrial rate span 2 of 4 serving utilities: 6.0 to 7.4¢/kWh, shown as context and never as the county rate.

The covered queue feeds list nothing for Fairfax, Virginia, which may be quiet or simply uningested. Fairfax, Virginia has no EIA-860M generation on file, which reads as zero rather than as a gap. Fairfax sits under a balancing authority that eGRID puts at 716.09 lb CO2 per MWh.

Fairfax withdrew 1.44 million gallons per day for all uses in the USGS 2015 data, which counts demand, not headroom. About 257,651 people are employed in construction within a 120 km commute of Fairfax (BLS QCEW), which frames staffing distance rather than free labour.

For Fairfax, treat this as screening-grade county context useful for narrowing a search rather than settling a site. Taken together, the figures for Fairfax, Virginia describe the grid around a prospective site, drawn from public data with their gaps left visible on purpose. To move past screening in Fairfax, Virginia, a specific address needs its own interconnection study, which this page does not attempt. The figures for Fairfax, Virginia refresh as their public datasets do, and the exact sources and dates sit in the source log below this section.

Sources