St. Croix, WI: data center power outlook

Grid position at a glance

Serving utilities

CITY OF NEW RICHMOND, CITY OF RIVER FALLS, CITY OF ST PAUL - (NE), DUNN COUNTY ELECTRIC COOP, NORTHERN STATES POWER CO, NORTHERN STATES POWER CO - MINNESOTA, NORTHWESTERN WISCONSIN ELEC CO, PIERCE-PEPIN COOP SERVICES, POLK-BURNETT ELECTRIC COOP, ST CROIX ELECTRIC COOP, WPPI ENERGY

ISO / market

MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator)

Highest grid access

161 kV

Substations in county

45

Industrial retail rate

8.9¢/kWhState-level EIA-861 industrial average. The map colours by this, not by a per-county rate.

Per-utility rates in county

5 of 11 serving utilities: 8.4 to 28.1¢/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

6 projects, 625 MW

Proposed generation

101 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

982 lb CO2/MWh

Water withdrawals

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 Water already withdrawn locally, not water available for a new load.

Construction labor near site

110,414 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 St. Croix

Everything here about St. Croix, Wisconsin comes from public federal and state records, with the gaps left visible. St. Croix reaches 161 kV at its highest mapped voltage, a transmission class that can carry a substantial interconnection where capacity exists. With 45 substations mapped, St. Croix offers interconnection points across many locations.

St. Croix falls inside the MISO market (Midcontinent Independent System Operator), which governs how its interconnection requests and capacity move. The rate for St. Croix is the 8.9 cents per kWh state industrial average (EIA-861), the same figure the map colours by. Across St. Croix, reported per-utility industrial rates cover 5 of 11 serving utilities: 8.4 to 28.1¢/kWh, offered only as context beneath the state figure.

St. Croix has 6 interconnection-queue projects on record, totalling 625 MW of requested capacity. St. Croix has 101 MW of planned or under-construction generation on file in EIA-860M. The balancing authority covering St. Croix carries a grid carbon intensity of 981.982 lb CO2 per MWh in eGRID.

Reported freshwater withdrawals for all uses in St. Croix are 13.59 million gallons per day in the USGS 2015 compilation, existing demand rather than water free for a new load. Around St. Croix, some 110,414 people work in construction within about a 120 km commute (BLS QCEW), a measure of reach, not of available crews.

These numbers for St. Croix are screening-grade context for the whole county, drawn from public data with the gaps left visible. Read the figures for St. Croix, Wisconsin together rather than one at a time: grid access matters less without substations near it, and a quiet queue reads differently inside an organized market than outside one. The next step for St. Croix, Wisconsin is an address-level interconnection study; the county figures here only narrow where to look. For St. Croix, Wisconsin, the source log below records where each figure comes from and when it was pulled, keeping the provenance visible.

Sources