How Much Power Does a Data Center Use?
Data center power use is usually measured in megawatts (MW) of IT load, plus overhead for cooling and power distribution captured by the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratio.
- Last updated
- 2026-04-15
- Reading time
- 5 min
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Typical sizes by category
Edge / enterprise: under 5 MW. Mid-size colocation: 10–50 MW. Hyperscale cloud campus: 100–500 MW. Frontier AI campus: 500 MW – 2,000 MW (announced).
By comparison, a typical US household consumes about 1.2 kW on average — so a 500 MW campus uses the rough equivalent of 400,000 homes.
What PUE actually means
PUE is total facility energy divided by IT energy. A PUE of 1.2 means 20% overhead for cooling, lighting, and conversion losses. Modern hyperscale facilities target 1.1–1.2; older enterprise sites are often 1.5–2.0.
Why AI is changing the math
GPU racks for AI training routinely draw 50–120 kW per rack, compared with 5–15 kW for traditional cloud workloads. This raises power density, cooling complexity, and total campus MW.
Frequently asked questions
What is a 'gigawatt-scale' data center?
A campus with 1,000 MW or more of planned IT capacity. As of 2026, a small but growing number of US sites are designed at this scale.
How is data center power use trending?
US data center electricity use is projected to roughly double between 2024 and 2030, driven mostly by AI training and inference workloads.