Spokane, WA: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

AVISTA CORP, BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION, CITY OF CHENEY - (WA), CLEARWATER POWER COMPANY, INLAND POWER & LIGHT COMPANY, KOOTENAI ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE, MODERN ELECTRIC WATER COMPANY, NORTHERN LIGHTS, INC, PUD NO 1 OF PEND OREILLE COUNTY, VERA IRRIGATION DISTRICT #15

ISO / market

NON_ISO (Not in an organized wholesale market)

Highest grid access

500 kV

Substations in county

95

Industrial retail rate

6.9¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

4 of 10 serving utilities: 1.3 to 7.8¢/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

359 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

25,843 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 Spokane

For Spokane, Washington, the following sections turn public grid records into a siting-oriented summary. The highest mapped voltage in Spokane is 500 kV, in the high-voltage transmission class. Spokane carries 95 substations, a dense footprint across the county.

Spokane, Washington lies outside an organized wholesale market, so generation and transmission are arranged bilaterally and through the local utility rather than a central market operator. The state industrial average retail rate is 6.9 cents per kWh, drawn from EIA-861 and applied to Spokane at the state level rather than as a county rate. The serving utilities in Spokane that publish a rate range 4 of 10 serving utilities: 1.3 to 7.8¢/kWh, a spread kept separate from the state average.

Spokane, Washington has nothing in the interconnection queue across the feeds covered here, quiet or uningested. For Spokane, Washington, the EIA-860M inventory shows no planned or under-construction generation, a measured absence. Grid carbon intensity for Spokane, via its balancing authority, is 358.777 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

USGS 2015 puts freshwater withdrawals across Spokane at 192.3 million gallons per day for all uses, a measure of use, not spare supply. Within roughly a 120 km commute of Spokane, about 25,843 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 Spokane figures as screening-grade context: they describe the surrounding grid, not a specific parcel. The numbers for Spokane, Washington 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 Spokane, Washington turns on a study of a particular address, something no county-level page can stand in for. Every number shown for Spokane, Washington traces to a public source listed below, with its retrieval date, so the provenance is auditable rather than asserted.

Sources