NATIONAL AND REGIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF INTERNET DATA CENTER GROWTH

The electricity consumption of Internet data centers is a growing concern to utility demand forecasters, data center facility managers, energy analysts and policy makers. Using estimates of U.S. computer room floor space and total computer room power density, we found that U.S. data centers in the aggregate require less than 500 MW of power, and use only a fraction of a percent (less than 0.12% in 2000) of the electricity consumed nationwide. In this paper, our order-ofmagnitude estimate suggests that energy demands of Internet data centers do not represent an enormous new burden on the electricity industry as a whole. The fact that these facilities tend to be concentrated in certain areas, however, may mean that there will be significant regional electricity demands in some parts of the country.