AI Demand Is Fueling A Data Center Development Boom In North America
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The number of bit barns currently under construction has exploded in the wake of the AI boom, surging nearly 70 percent in North America's top markets over the past year to a record high of 3.87 gigawatts, according to a newly published CBRE report.
The fastest-growing regions include Atlanta, where the number of datacenter developments increased 76 percent year-over-year to roughly 1.3 gigawatts of capacity. Meanwhile, in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, the report clocked 463 megawatts of new capacity under development, more than quadruple that of the previous year.
This rapid expansion of compute resources, however, is being hampered by a shortage of power and extended lead times for critical electrical infrastructure necessary to bring these facilities online, resulting in delays.
When these facilities do come online, only about 20 percent of it will actually be up for grabs for you and I. Nearly 80 percent of the 3.87 gigawatts of new capacity has already been spoken for by the major hyperscalers, cloud providers, and rent-a-GPU operations.
Despite this, CBRE reports that DC capacity in major markets was up 10 percent in the first half of 2024, with 1.1 gigawatts having come online in the past year.
[...] Going forward, CBRE predicts secondary markets in Northern Indiana, Idaho, Arkansas, and Kansas will become hotspots for hyperscale expansion thanks to their abundance of cheap land and power.
Speaking of power, a shortage of transformers, switches, and generators is expected to continue to plague development timelines potentially by as much as four years. If that weren't enough, CBRE notes that if you need that capacity, customers should expect to prelease space between two and four years ahead of time.
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