Use this table to see how the energy capacity of the hyperscale data centres translate into figures that are more easy to understand.
Type the capacity of the data centre into the yellow box
| Capacity of the data centre | MW | |
| Same as the power for how many homes | 600,000 | |
| Percentage of Scotland’s peak power demand | 15 | % |
| Energy the data centre uses in a year | 4,204,800 | MWh |
| Equivalent to how many Scottish households energy use in a year | 1,339,108 | |
| What percentage of total households in Scotland is this the equivalent of? | 53 | % |
| What percentage of the whole of Scotland’s energy use in 2024 | 19 | % |
| What percentage of all wind energy production in Scotland in 2024 (onshore plus offshore) | 14 | % |
| CO2 emissions related to the energy generation (Kg CO2) per year | 744,249,600 | Kg CO2 |
| CO2 emissions related to the energy generation (tonnes CO2) per year – assuming most recent carbon intensity of energy figures | 744,250 | tonnes CO2 |
Figures used for the calculations
Average Load factor of a data centre 80% (NESO states that the ‘fleet wide average load factor is 70%, yet this has been judged to increase to 80-85% for hyperscale facilities and data centres dealing predominately with AI.)
electricty usage of average Scottish home in a year 3140KWh
Number of households in Scotland in 2024 2,550,000
Total Energy consumption in 2024 in Scotland 21.7 TWh
Energy from all wind in Scotland (offshore and onshore) 30.1 TWh
Carbon intensity of energy (2025 figures) 0.177 kgCO2e/KWh
What’s all this about Watts?
Here’s a little rundown of Power and Energy and what the difference is and why it is important.
Data centre size is measured in units of power. This is because the limiting factor of a data centre is electrical power requirements. A data centre will always run out of power before it runs out of land due to the energy requirements for the compute and the cooling.
- Measures of energy are important for calculating the energy costs to the consumer, or greenhouse gas emissions.
- Measures of power are useful for specifying grid infrastructure and generation demand.
Power
Power is measured in Watts/ Kilowatts/ Megawatts/ Gigawatts, and is an important measure so that you can gauge the transmission infrastructure and generation capacity required. It needs to be specified for the maximum power demand to avoid blackouts. A rule of thumb used by grid engineers is 1MW provides power for roughly 1000 homes.
Energy
Energy is a measure of power x time and is measured in Megawatt hours (or Kilowatt hours etc).
With a data centre the power used over time averages at about 80% capacity all day and all year round. However a
home fluctuates much more with the most power used in winter and in the evenings and the least in the summer.
To give an illustration, this is 0% of Scotland’s current peak energy demand
Reference: this is based on a figure of 4000MW for peak energy demand given by NESO