Calculator
Data center impact calculator
What does a 1,000-megawatt campus or a 2-million-gallon-a-day water permit mean in household terms? Pick a tracked project or type your own figures.
Electricity per year—
Same as the yearly use of—average U.S. homes
Water per day—
Same as the at-home use of up to—average American families
The math, and its limits
- Electricity
- Megawatts × 8,760 hours × the share of the year you choose = megawatt-hours per year. At 100%, that is the ceiling: a campus running flat out at its full planned capacity every hour of the year. Real facilities are built in phases and run below their full rating, so treat 100% as a maximum, not a forecast.
- Homes
- Megawatt-hours ÷ 10,791 kWh. The EIA says: “In 2022, the average annual amount of electricity sold to (purchased by) a U.S. residential electric-utility customer was 10,791 kilowatthours (kWh), an average of about 899 kWh per month.” U.S. Energy Information Administration. This compares energy over a year. It doesn’t mean the grid could power that many homes instead, which depends on when power is used.
- Water
- Gallons per day ÷ 300. EPA WaterSense says: “The average American family uses more than 300 gallons of water per day at home.” U.S. EPA WaterSense. Because the EPA figure is a floor (“more than 300”), the family count is an upper bound. Many data center water figures are permit limits or peak estimates rather than average use; the project record says which.
- Project figures
- Capacity and water values come straight from each project’s record, where every figure is cited. Projects whose sources give capacity in gigawatts are converted at 1 GW = 1,000 MW. Where a record has more than one water figure, the calculator uses the first and lists the rest.