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How Much Power Does a Data Center Use

An edge data center draws 1 to 10 MW, a colocation building 10 to 100 MW and a hyperscale campus 100 MW or more. Run all year, each megawatt is 8,760 MWh, about what 829 average US homes use. US data centers used 176 TWh in 2023, 4.4 percent of the country's electricity, and Berkeley Lab expects 325 to 580 TWh by 2028. For what a megawatt means and costs to build, see the data center megawatts guide.

Power by type of data center

Data centers are sized by the power they can deliver, in megawatts, more than by floor area. The ranges below are the usual classes. The Congressional Research Service adds that industry analysts call a site hyperscale when it has at least 5,000 servers, at least 10,000 square feet and a power rating above 100 MW. The yearly energy column assumes the site runs at that load around the clock, which is close to how data centers operate. The meaning of the MW rating and the cost per MW to build are in the data center megawatts guide.

Type	Typical power	Energy per year at full load	US homes with the same use
Edge	1 to 10 MW	8,760 to 87,600 MWh	829 to 8,291
Colocation	10 to 100 MW	87,600 to 876,000 MWh	8,291 to 82,907
Hyperscale	100 MW and up	876,000 MWh and up	82,907 and up
Largest campuses	over 3,000 MW	over 26 TWh	over 2.4 million

Power classes from the Wikipedia data center article, which cites industry sources. Homes computed with 10,566 kWh per household per year, the EIA figure used by the Congressional Research Service. Energy computed as MW times 8,760 hours.

US and world totals

Berkeley Lab's report for the Department of Energy put US data center use at about 60 TWh a year from 2014 to 2016, 76 TWh in 2018 and 176 TWh in 2023, 4.4 percent of all US electricity. Its 2028 scenarios run from 325 to 580 TWh, 6.7 to 12 percent of US demand. Growth was about 7 percent a year from 2014 to 2018 and 18 percent a year from 2018 to 2023. Worldwide the International Energy Agency puts data centers at about 415 TWh in 2024, 1.5 percent of global electricity, and projects about 945 TWh by 2030, just under 3 percent, with the US taking the largest share of the increase.

Measure	TWh per year	Average load
US data centers, 2023	176	20.1 GW
US data centers, 2028 low case	325	37.1 GW
US data centers, 2028 high case	580	66.2 GW
World data centers, 2024	415	47.4 GW
World data centers, 2030 projection	945	107.9 GW

TWh from Berkeley Lab via Data Center Dynamics and the American Public Power Association, and from the IEA. Average load computed as TWh divided by 8,760 hours.

Where the power goes, PUE

Power usage effectiveness, PUE, is total facility power divided by the power used by the IT equipment. The rest goes to cooling, power conversion losses and lighting. The Uptime Institute survey put the global average at 1.54 in 2025, unchanged for six years. Hyperscale operators report about 1.10 to 1.15, while colocation and enterprise sites average about 1.58 to 1.80. The Congressional Research Service says roughly half or more of a data center's power runs the IT equipment and much of the rest is cooling.

PUE	Share to IT equipment	Share to cooling, losses and lighting	Typical of
1.10	91%	9%	Hyperscale operators
1.20	83%	17%	Efficient new builds
1.54	65%	35%	Global average, 2025
1.80	56%	44%	Older colocation and enterprise
2.00	50%	50%	Older or inefficient sites

Shares computed as 1 divided by PUE. Averages from the Uptime Institute survey as reported by mGrid.

Power per rack, AI against traditional

Rack power is where AI changes the numbers. NVIDIA rates a GB200 NVL72 rack, 72 GPUs, at about 120 kW, which requires liquid cooling. The table shows how many racks 10 MW of IT load supports at different densities, which is the same arithmetic designers use to lay out a hall.

Power per rack	Racks per 10 MW of IT load	Facility power at PUE 1.54
10 kW	1,000	15.4 MW
30 kW	333	15.4 MW
120 kW, GB200 NVL72 class	83	15.4 MW

Computed. The facility figure is the same in every row because the IT load is fixed at 10 MW, only the floor space changes.

Turning megawatts into kWh and dollars

A data center runs close to flat out, so yearly energy is the load in MW times 8,760 hours. The cost columns use three example rates so you can scale to your own contract, because large data center contracts are negotiated and vary widely by state.

Average load	MWh per year	At 6 cents per kWh	At 8 cents per kWh	At 10 cents per kWh
1 MW	8,760	$0.53 million	$0.70 million	$0.88 million
5 MW	43,800	$2.63 million	$3.50 million	$4.38 million
10 MW	87,600	$5.26 million	$7.01 million	$8.76 million
50 MW	438,000	$26.3 million	$35.0 million	$43.8 million
100 MW	876,000	$52.6 million	$70.1 million	$87.6 million
300 MW	2,628,000	$158 million	$210 million	$263 million
1,000 MW	8,760,000	$526 million	$701 million	$876 million

Computed. Example rates, not quoted tariffs.

The electrical gear a 10, 50 or 100 MW site needs

Every megawatt arrives through transformers. A large site takes a utility feed at transmission or subtransmission voltage into its own substation, then steps down to medium voltage and finally to 480 V through unit substation transformers, commonly 2,500 kVA each, feeding the UPS and the data halls. The table gives the arithmetic for three site sizes at a 0.95 power factor.

Facility load	IT load at PUE 1.54	MVA at 0.95 pf	2,500 kVA transformers at full load	Amps at 34.5 kV	Amps at 138 kV
10 MW	6.5 MW	10.5	5	176	44
50 MW	32.5 MW	52.6	22	881	220
100 MW	64.9 MW	105.3	43	1,762	440

Computed. Real designs add redundancy, often N+1 or 2N, so the installed transformer count is higher than the full load count shown.

Why it matters for equipment

The same growth that is raising data center power use is stretching equipment queues. Terrapin Construction Group listed pad mounted transformers at 40 to 65 weeks and substation transformers of 5 to 25 MVA at 65 to 95 weeks in 2026. A site schedule is set by its electrical gear, so the transformers, switchgear and generators are ordered first. We quote all three for data center projects, new, new surplus and reconditioned.

Data center power

Transformers, switchgear, UPS feeds and generators we source.

Transformers for data centers

What a data center needs from its transformers.

Unit substations

Primary and secondary unit substations for large sites.

MVA transformers

Sizes, amps and lead times from 1 to 100 MVA.

MVA transformers explained

What MVA means and how large units are rated.

Power transformers

Substation class units for the utility feed.

1 MW generators

Standby sets for data halls.

Isolation transformers

Separately derived systems for sensitive loads.

Common questions

How much power does a data center use

An edge data center typically draws 1 to 10 MW, a colocation site 10 to 100 MW and a hyperscale campus 100 MW or more. One megawatt run all year is 8,760 MWh.