Northern Virginia data centers have topped 4,900 megawatts. What does that mean?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Northern Virginia data centers have topped 4,900 megawatts. What does that mean?

Jeff Clabaugh | [e-mail]
June 23, 2025, 1:13 PM

Real estate firm JLL’s quarterly report on global data centers once again ranks Northern Virginia as the world’s largest data center market. And by a long shot.

At the end of the first quarter, Northern Virginia’s data center inventory topped 4,900 megawatts. Data centers are generally measured by computing power, not size. But it translates into a major footprint.

“Four thousand nine hundred megawatts, give or take, is about equivalent to about 50 million square feet. To compare that to the Northern Virginia office market, it is about 140 million square feet. Northern Virginia is almost five times the size of any other market in the U.S.,” said Matt Gallagher, senior managing director at JLL’s Tysons, Virginia office.

Another 1,100 megawatts of data center space is currently under construction in Northern Virginia, according to JLL, with almost 5,500 new megawatts of data center space planned. … Almost all of that new data center space under contraction or planned in Northern Virginia is already spoken for.

{snip}

Jeff Clabaugh
Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.
[e-mail]
@wtopclabaugh

[House of Roberts]

1. That's 1000 megawatts more than the maximum output

of all three reactors at Brown's Ferry here in North Alabama.