CORRIDOR
Celaya Solutions Research
Impact simulator
Scenario model v2
Defaults current to Jun 2026

Basin, grid, and affordability prediction HUD

A transparent scenario engine for the El Paso and Santa Teresa data center corridor. Set which projects come online and when, then scrub the timeline to project water draw, air emissions, the total household utility bill, the share of household income it consumes, and water basin stress. The bill model counts only projects connected to El Paso Electric's grid; the water model counts all of them. Every coefficient is exposed, sourced, and editable. This is a model for thinking, not a forecast of fact.

Readout

Corridor at 2032

scenario: announced trajectory

Household utility burden over time

utility bill as a share of household income. Lines mark the 6% high-burden and 10.5% combined-utility thresholds.

Water draw across the corridor

stacked by project, million gallons per day. All projects counted, grid-connected or not.

The monthly bill

baseline plus grid-connected data center cost

Carbon and air

CO2 area, NOx overlaid

City fiscal balance

cumulative, abated vs collected

Water basin stress

cumulative drawdown proxy
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Marginal demand the corridor pushes onto depletable Hueco Bolson groundwater, accumulated to the readout year.

How this model works, and what it cannot claim

Verifiedproject capacities, the 2026 bill levels and rate cases, El Paso median income, the McCloud plant scale, the 50 job floor, and that Project Jupiter runs on an islanded microgrid off El Paso Electric's grid.
Reportedthe 10 billion Meta investment, the 300 and 4,000 job figures, restoration pledges, the low-income household reference, and the forward utility inflation rate.
Contestedwhether and when the McCloud plant cost shifts to ratepayers, whether Fort Bliss connects to the El Paso Electric grid, the real operational water draw of fuel-cell and water-neutral projects, and campus-scale water.

The engine self calibrates to published anchors. At the verified inputs, Meta at one gigawatt resolves to about 0.4 million gallons a day average, the El Paso Water estimate, and produces on the order of 1.3 million tons of CO2 a year, within the city staff estimate of a roughly 21 percent emissions rise over a 2019 baseline. The 2026 starting bill of about 111 dollars electric plus 92 dollars water matches the rates approved this year. When the model reproduces numbers already on the public record, the projections built on the same coefficients are defensible.

The grid-connection rule is the most important structural choice. Project Jupiter in Santa Teresa runs an islanded on-site microgrid on Bloom fuel cells and is not on El Paso Electric's grid, so it adds nothing to the El Paso ratepayer bill, no matter its 2.45 gigawatt scale. It still draws on the shared basin, so it counts fully in the water model. Fort Bliss has no El Paso Electric service request yet, so it defaults to off-grid in the announced scenario; toggle its grid connection on, or run the aggressive scenario, to model what happens to bills if a 3 gigawatt load lands on the local grid. Emissions count for every project regardless of grid status, since the air is shared. Note that fuel cells emit CO2 at a somewhat lower rate and far less NOx than the reciprocating gas engines modeled here, so off-grid fuel-cell air numbers are an upper bound.

The fiscal panel is the softest part of the model; only the city's 80 percent, 15 year abatement is verified, and county and school taxes are separate. The McCloud plant is air cooled and uses no water, so it adds none to the water model. Treat the basin gauge as a relative stress proxy, not an absolute measure of aquifer life. The low-income figure models a household near the poverty line in a city where about 18 percent live in poverty and roughly a quarter of electric customers have fallen behind on bills. Confirm any figure against its primary source before using it in testimony or public comment.