Basin Ledger

An electrical grid's books settle every hour. The Great Lakes Basin's books have been kept for a century and still carry one blank column. This page draws the map for both, with prescriptions in-force where available.

The map

Prairie State Generating Station · Kaskaskia River · 7.85 B gal/yr (MODELED)Callaway · Missouri River · 7.07 B gal/yr (MODELED)Clinton Power Station · Salt Creek · 5.84 B gal/yr (MODELED)Fermi · Lake Erie · 5.55 B gal/yr (MODELED)Gibson · Gibson Lake · 5.45 B gal/yr (MODELED)Labadie · Missouri River · 3.60 B gal/yr (MODELED)Baldwin Energy Complex · Baldwin Lake, Kaskaskia River · 3.53 B gal/yr (MODELED)Monroe (MI) · Raisin River · 2.96 B gal/yr (MODELED)Midland Cogeneration Venture · Tittabawasse River · 2.58 B gal/yr (MODELED)Merom · Turtle Creek Reservoir · 2.11 B gal/yr (MODELED)J H Campbell · Lake Michigan, Pigeon Lake · 2.05 B gal/yr (MODELED)AES Petersburg · White River · 2.05 B gal/yr (MODELED)D B Wilson · Green River · 1.71 B gal/yr (MODELED)Blue Water Energy Center · St. Clair River · 1.47 B gal/yr (MODELED)Belle River · St. Clair River · 1.38 B gal/yr (MODELED)Edwardsport · West fork White River · 1.21 B gal/yr (MODELED)Eagle Valley (IN) · West fork of White River · 1.06 B gal/yr (MODELED)Cayuga · Wabash River · 1.00 B gal/yr (MODELED)Warrick · Ohio River · 0.84 B gal/yr (MODELED)Sioux · Mississippi River · 0.83 B gal/yr (MODELED)Sugar Creek Power · Wells · 0.80 B gal/yr (MODELED)Zeeland Generating Station · Municipality · 0.78 B gal/yr (MODELED)Michigan City · Lake Michigan · 0.64 B gal/yr (MODELED)Whiting Clean Energy · Lake Michigan · 0.61 B gal/yr (MODELED)Harding Street · West fork of White River · 0.54 B gal/yr (MODELED)Holland Energy Facility · Kaskaskia River · 0.52 B gal/yr (MODELED)F B Culley · Ohio River · 0.44 B gal/yr (MODELED)Jackson Generating Station · Municipality · 0.40 B gal/yr (MODELED)Noblesville · White River · 0.36 B gal/yr (MODELED)Greenwood (MI) · Municipality · 0.30 B gal/yr (MODELED)R D Green · Green River · 0.13 B gal/yr (MODELED)Rush Island · Mississippi River · 0.13 B gal/yr (MODELED)Dearborn Industrial Generation · Detroit River · 0.07 B gal/yr (MODELED)Gary Works · Lake Michigan · 0.05 B gal/yr (MODELED)Indiana Harbor West · Lake Michigan · 0.04 B gal/yr (MODELED)Escanaba Mill · Lake Michigan · 0.03 B gal/yr (MODELED)ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor · Lake Michigan · 0.02 B gal/yr (MODELED)Dan E Karn · Saginaw River · 0.01 B gal/yr (MODELED)one campus, Great Lakes basin4.1% unplaced · no declared source
Mississippi basin · 67.2%Great Lakes basin · 25.4%groundwater / municipal · 3.3%4.1% unplaced · no declared source

67.2% of the water consumed to generate MISO-Central electricity evaporates from the Mississippi basin. 25.4% evaporates inside the Great Lakes basin, where the load sits. The gauges have been on these rivers since 1889; what no ledger holds is the column joining this water to the electricity it produced.

EIA-923 2024 generation, Macknick consumption factors (MODELED, labeled), grouped by each plant's EIA-860 declared water source; consumption basis, never withdrawal. 43 plants, 193.2 TWh, 68.88 B gal/yr. Boundaries: USGS WBD; MISO footprint: EIA US Energy Atlas RTO layer (Internet Archive capture 2025-08-25). Boundaries translated, never drawn.

The missing cross-entry

A basin's books never close.

THE ELECTRICAL GRID'S BOOKS

00:00settled
01:00settled
02:00settled
03:00settled
04:00settled
05:00settled
06:00settled

Settles hourly. Every megawatt-hour assigned to a generator and a load. Public, federal, machine-readable, and the books close on schedule.

A BASIN'S BOOKS

gauged (USGS, 1889-)tallied (compact, annual)the join
water consumed inside an hour of electricity, assigned to the load that drew it: the entry nobody keeps

Gauged continuously, tallied annually, self-reported at the seams. The Corps of Engineers is on every lock and level, and serious people have kept these books for a century. No settlement function forces the columns to balance, and no column joins water to the electricity it produced.

Every large company already counts the carbon inside the electricity it buys; the accountants call it scope 2. This page keeps the same entry for water. The gauges use the word withdrawal. Every figure here is consumption — the share that never returns. These two terms never share a surface without being labeled.

The prescription

The method is universal. The values are the basin's own.

MI instruments ────────────▶ no ratified ceiling · absence, labeled

QC instruments ────────────▶ no ratified ceiling · absence, labeled

CA GSP budget ──▶ 7,650 / 27,740 AFY ──▶ S = 0.276 ──┐

LBNL demonstrated band ──▶ P = 0.30 ──────────▶ the dials on every card

Erie / GLWA

HUC8 x 9

Lake Erie drainage (Michigan portion) plus the Great Lakes Water Authority service territory

status
IN FORCE · v1 · since 2026-07-29
Aquadrio certifies at
0.3 L/kWh, strictly under
translated operand
none ratified
applied to
no facility yet
vintage
v1 · prior versions stay readable · the past is never re-graded

Michigan gates by permit and adverse-resource-impact review at cited thresholds (100,000 GPD registration; 1,000,000 GPD zone C; 2,000,000 GPD capacity; 5,000,000 GPD Compact review). Where the regime states no number, we write none.

Great Lakes Compact · Part 327 · WWAT · GLWA capacities

the derivation memo · recomputable by anyone who disagrees

St. Lawrence

QC-SLRB

The St. Lawrence River Basin, as Quebec's statute defines it

status
IN FORCE · v1 · since 2026-07-29
Aquadrio certifies at
0.3 L/kWh, strictly under
translated operand
none ratified
applied to
no facility yet
vintage
v1 · prior versions stay readable · the past is never re-graded

Quebec ratifies withdrawal triggers at 75,000 / 379,000 / 50,000 litres per day, a transfer-out prohibition, and royalty prices, not a consumptive ceiling. Where the regime states no number, we write none.

This corridor's power is hydro-heavy, and a hydro grid is charged real water for its reservoirs here: one net-basis factor on every grid, held at the convergence of the two published net estimates, under the gross literature's central mass. If a basin ever rules otherwise, the prescription process is the public path that corrects it.

EQA 31.89 · Schedule 0.A · RPEP · the royalty

the derivation memo · recomputable by anyone who disagrees

Indian Wells Valley

CA-IWV

The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin (DWR Bulletin 118 basin 6-054)

status
IN FORCE · v1 · since 2026-07-29
Aquadrio certifies at
0.083 L/kWh, strictly under
translated operand
none ratified
applied to
no facility yet
vintage
v1 · prior versions stay readable · the past is never re-graded

California ratifies the basin-wide number (sustainable yield 7,650 acre-feet a year, state-approved 2022) and answers the share question itself: allocations key to base-period pumping, federal rights, and municipal need, and pumping above allocation is lawful at the published fee. A zero share at a price converts to no ceiling; we document the regime's answer rather than replacing it.

Ratified and contested: the basin's safe yield is under active adjudication, and the state's technical review is open. The prescription carries the instrument in force today and re-derives on judgment.

SGMA · the GSP's ratified budget · DWR approval 2022

the derivation memo · recomputable by anyone who disagrees

No facility is assigned to any basin yet. Every facility today grades on the labeled interim default, 1.8 L/kWh strictly under; assignment begins with the pilot. The registry accepts the next basin without redesign.

Values from the prescription registry (measurement/agents/prescription_registry.py), pinned by test to the ratified literals; the dial chain on the third card is P 0.30 x S 7,650/27,740 from the basin's own DWR-approved budget, published at two significant figures toward achievability.

Four clocks

The decision outlives everyone in the room.

a rezoning hearingtypical ~90 days
an infrastructure fundtypical ~5 years
a site approval's lifetypical ~30 years
a basinno terminus

Every decision on this page outlives everyone in the room that made it. The rule that graded a decision has to be recoverable decades later.

Durations are typical figures for the decision classes named, labeled as such. None is a measurement.

The record

Rarity, drawn one hour at a time.

MISO-Central · 2025-07-07 to 2026-07-06 · 7,968 clean-window hours

zero hours under the 100 g ceiling
0 g100 g · the ceiling273.71 g · the year's cleanest hour (2.74x the ceiling)675 g

Grid-scoped figure: it describes the electricity supply across one window under the published carbon ceiling.

Archived MISO market-feed day cache (a distinct source from the live meter's EIA-930 feed); tiles ordered by carbon intensity, one per hour.

MISO

0%

0 of 8,381 hours · peak-only holds 0 · carbon-only 4,627 · both 3,754 · median 436.7 g

CAISO

15.8%

1,323 of 8,383 hours · peak-only holds 2 · carbon-only 6,730 · both 328 · median 228.2 g

BPA

91.7%

7,688 of 8,383 hours · peak-only holds 500 · carbon-only 195 · both 0 · median 35.3 g

The same instrument running on three different grids. Each tile is one percent of that grid's hours.

EIA-930 hourly fuel mix and demand, 2025-07-22 to 2026-07-06. This window is roughly 350 days.

Right of reply

worked example · Simulated no facility exists to draw from; the row is fabricated to show the mechanism

facility WUE · MODELED1.42 L/kWh
facility WUE · after metering1.13 L/kWh

metering lowers the number, and the measured number replaces the modeled one either way.

worked example · Simulated no facility exists to draw from; the row is fabricated to show the mechanism

facility WUE · MODELED1.42 L/kWh
facility WUE · after metering1.71 L/kWh

metering raises it, and the measured number replaces the modeled one either way.

Host cities, basin authorities, and operators can write to pilots@aquadrio.com to be added to our waitlist.

Three doors

What you can do with this page, today.

You sit on a council and an application just landed

upstream water behind that electricity, per year

274.2 million gallons MODELED

flat load x 8,760 h x 313 gal/MWh (measured, EIA 2024 cooling mix, consumption basis; Standard §5.2 and the published method memos). The facility's own ceiling where it sits: 1.8 L/kWh strictly under (the labeled interim default); the picker changes the ceiling shown, never the upstream arithmetic.

You run a facility

Start the process of adding a meter to your facility through a pilot to get your specific hourly vintages on the permanent record.

You price risk

Aquadrio's record adds a water column that published criteria can cite: graded hours, basin prescriptions with instruments attached, and a vintage that never re-grades the past.

One door in: pilots@aquadrio.com

Standard v0.3 · prescriptions in force as dated on their cards · sources: EIA-930 hourly generation · EIA-860 cooling and water source · EIA-923 generation · USGS WBD · basin instruments as cited per prescription · every figure on this page recomputable from the published derivations.