How Much Power Does a Data Center Need?
Data center capacity is measured not in square feet but in megawatts of critical IT load — the power available to the computing equipment. Understanding that number, and how a site gets it, is the key to understanding the whole asset class.
What Is a Megawatt?
A megawatt (MW) is one million watts, or 1,000 kilowatts. Power measures the rate of energy use at a moment in time. A 100 MW data center can draw up to 100 million watts continuously when fully loaded. A gigawatt (GW) is 1,000 MW — city-scale power, and the frontier of the largest AI campuses.
How Much Power, by Facility Type
| Capacity | Scale | What it represents |
|---|---|---|
| 10 MW | Small / colo | A modest colocation facility or one data hall. |
| 50 MW | Mid-size | A solid single-building deployment; a meaningful new utility load. |
| 100 MW | Hyperscale building/phase | Tens of thousands of homes' worth of power. |
| 500 MW | Major campus | Requires dedicated transmission and substation infrastructure. |
| 1 GW | Mega-campus | City-scale load; often needs new generation, not just new wires. |
Why AI Changed Everything: Rack Density
A conventional rack ran 5–10 kW. A rack packed with AI accelerators can draw 40–130 kW or more. Multiply that across thousands of racks and a single AI campus can demand 100 MW to over 1 GW. For the first time in decades, US electricity demand growth is being driven materially by a single new category of customer — which is why power, not land, has become the binding constraint. See Powered Land for Data Centers.
How a Site Gets Power: the Grid Path
Power reaches a campus through high-voltage transmission (commonly 115, 138, 230, 345, or 500 kV) stepped down at a substation. To connect large new load, a project enters the utility's interconnection queue and undergoes studies that determine upgrades and cost allocation — a process now badly congested, with multi-year waits common. This is why sites with existing substation and transmission capacity, like brownfields and retired coal plants, are so valuable.
Behind-the-Meter: Gas and Nuclear
Because the grid is slow, developers increasingly build power on-site. On-site natural gas turbines can bring large blocks online quickly where pipelines exist, and nuclear — co-location and future small modular reactors (SMRs) — is emerging for large, firm, carbon-free power. At gigawatt scale, a campus is an energy project as much as a real estate project: the power is built, not merely found.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much power does a data center use?
What is a megawatt?
How many homes does a megawatt power?
What is an interconnection queue and why is it backed up?
Can data centers be powered by natural gas or nuclear?
Need to know if your site can deliver the megawatts?
Carson Jones can help you read the utility, transmission, and substation picture for a parcel. Get a confidential site read or visit Passive Investments.
Educational information only — not legal, tax, engineering, or investment advice.
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