How to Read a Data Center Announcement – MW, Phases and What Gets Built

"Gigawatt campus coming to rural county." You have seen some version of that headline, probably more than once this month. It sounds enormous, and sometimes it is. Other times the gigawatt is a ten-year hope stacked on a land option and a utility request that may never be granted. The difference matters to anyone selling power, planning a grid, voting on a rezoning or deciding whether to bid on the work. How do you read a data center announcement and figure out what will actually get built?

To read a data center announcement, first pin down what the megawatt number measures, then check how many phases it covers and how far along each phase really is. The number may be IT capacity, total facility load, a utility request or on-site generation, and those can differ by 30% or more for the same project. "Up to" usually describes the last phase, years away. What actually gets built shows up in the paperwork: land closed, zoning approved, a signed utility agreement, permits issued and steel going up.

What Does the MW Number in a Data Center Announcement Mean?

It depends on who is talking. A developer, a utility and an equipment vendor can describe the same campus with different numbers, all technically correct. Here are the four you will see most:

When an announcement just says "500 MW," ask which one. Then convert so you are comparing like with like.

How Do You Convert IT MW to Facility MW?

Multiply IT capacity by the expected power usage effectiveness (PUE). PUE is total facility power divided by IT power, so it captures cooling and losses.

A worked example with labelled assumptions:

1. Announced IT capacity: 300 MW.
2. Design PUE at peak: 1.3.
3. Facility load at peak: 300 × 1.3 = 390 MW.
4. Utility request with a margin for growth and hot-day peaks: perhaps 450 MW.
5. On-site generation with N+1 redundancy, using an assumed 20 MW unit size: 390 ÷ 20 = 19.5, rounded up to 20 units, plus 1 spare = 21 units, or 420 MW installed.

So the same project could be reported as 300, 390, 420 or 450 MW. None of those is wrong. Mixing them in a spreadsheet is how forecasts end up double-counting.

What Does "Up To" Really Mean?

"Up to" means the maximum the developer hopes to reach, usually at full build-out. It is a ceiling. Campuses are almost always built in phases, and later phases depend on tenants, power and money that may not exist yet.

Look for phase details. A good announcement says how many megawatts are in phase one and when it should be energized. A vague one gives only the final number and a decade-long horizon.

Large AI campuses follow this pattern. When OpenAI announced a 4.5 GW partnership with Oracle in July 2025, it described more than 5 GW of Stargate capacity under development, including the site in Abilene, Texas. That is a portfolio figure across multiple sites and phases, not a single building switching on at once.

How Many Announced Projects Get Built?

Far fewer than are announced, at least on the timelines announced. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's large load literature review, updated in September 2026, tallied announced projects of 20 MW and larger exceeding $1 trillion and 68 GW. Compare that with what is physically being built. CBRE reported in September 2026 that about 7,481 MW was under construction in primary North American markets.

Those two numbers measure different things in different places, so do not divide one by the other. But the gap shows why announcements and construction need separate columns in any serious tracker.

Utility queues show the same gap. Developers often ask several utilities for power for the same project and build in only one place, so raw request totals overstate demand.

What Is Actually Under Construction?

A project is real when it has crossed hard milestones that cost money and require approvals. Here is a rough ladder, from least to most certain:

1. Announced: a press release, a rendering, maybe a land option.
2. Land acquired: the developer owns or has leased the site.
3. Zoning approved: local land use approval is granted.
4. Power secured: a signed utility service agreement or a financed on-site plant.
5. Permits issued: grading, building and air permits in hand.
6. Under construction: site work, foundations and steel.
7. Energized: the substation is live and the first data hall is commissioned.
8. Operating: tenants are running workloads.

Most headlines land at step 1 or 2. The jump from 3 to 4 is often the hardest, because grid capacity is scarce in many markets.

How Should You Read the Dollar Figure?

Divide the dollars by the megawatts and ask what is included. Building costs alone often run in the millions of dollars per megawatt of IT capacity. Cushman & Wakefield's 2026 cost guide put the average greenfield data center at about $17.6 million per MW. If an announcement's figure is several times higher, it likely includes servers and chips, which are replaced every few years.

Here is a labelled example. Say a release announces $15 billion for 1,000 MW. That is $15 million per MW, close to the building benchmark above, so it likely covers the building and its power and cooling, not the computers inside. If the same release claims $50 billion for 1,000 MW, the servers are almost certainly counted.

Watch the timeline too. "$10 billion over 10 years" is very different from $10 billion in the next 24 months.

How Should Power Suppliers and Utilities Use Announcements?

Use them as leads, not load forecasts. For a utility planner, a gas supplier or an equipment vendor, an announcement is a reason to make a phone call. It is not yet a reason to order a transformer or sign a gas contract.

A practical approach is to weight each project by how far it has climbed the ladder above. Here is an illustrative weighting, not an industry standard:

• Announced only: count a small fraction of the phase one load.
• Zoning approved and land closed: count more.
• Signed service agreement or financed on-site plant: count most of phase one.
• Under construction: count phase one in full, with later phases still discounted.

The exact weights are a judgment call, and they should change as you learn how projects in your region actually perform. The discipline of separating "announced" from "committed" is what matters. Forecasts that skip it tend to overbuild, and someone pays for the extra plant.

Which Red Flags Should Make You Skeptical?

A few signs suggest an announcement is more ambition than plan:

• No named tenant, developer partner or utility.
• Only an "up to" number, with no phase one size or date.
• No mention of how power will be delivered or generated.
• A site with no zoning approval or nearby transmission.
• Job counts that do not separate construction from permanent roles.

Green flags are the reverse: a named utility, a phase one in megawatts with a target date, a signed power agreement, zoning already granted and a general contractor on site. Before you commit time or capital, run the same checklist a buyer would use in data center due diligence: power, water, fiber and permits.

Read the Data Center Announcement, Then Read the Paperwork

The headline is the least informative part of any data center announcement. The useful facts are buried lower: which megawatts are being counted, how big phase one is, and which rung of the ladder the project has actually reached.

Use that ladder every time a new announcement lands, and follow the project milestone by milestone rather than headline by headline. Until a project has land, zoning, power and steel, its headline number is a ceiling. Treat it that way and your forecasts, bids and votes will hold up better.

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