What Does a Gigawatt-Scale AI Data Center Campus Require?

A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts. For a data center, it usually describes the planned peak electrical demand of a whole campus at full build-out, not a single building or the first phase. For context, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that all U.S. data centers together used about 4.4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023 and could reach 6.7% to 12% by 2028.⁹ A single 1 GW campus running near full load would use a meaningful share of that national total by itself.

Campuses of this size are becoming a recognized category. Bloom Energy’s 2026 survey of hyperscalers, colocation providers, utilities and suppliers projects that about one in five data center campuses will exceed gigawatt scale by 2030, rising to one in three by 2035.⁴ That is a survey of expectations, not a count of built projects, but it matches what utilities are seeing in their load requests.

The difference between a 100 MW hyperscale campus and a 1 GW AI campus is not just ten times more of everything. At gigawatt scale the local grid almost never has the capacity waiting, so the project becomes a transmission and generation project. Water, roads, housing for construction workers and local politics all move from line items to gating issues. Our broader guide to AI data center site requirements covers AI sites in general; this guide focuses on the very top of the size range, using the two most thoroughly reported U.S. examples.

The Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, developed by Crusoe and leased to Oracle for OpenAI workloads, is planned at about 1.2 GW in eight buildings.¹⁰¹¹ The first phase of two buildings and more than 200 MW started in June 2024, and the second phase of six more buildings and roughly another gigawatt started in March 2025.¹⁰ Epoch AI’s tracker estimated that four of the eight buildings were operating, projected completion in the second half of 2026, and noted that a planned expansion to 2.1 GW had been reversed.¹¹ A project directory lists the campus at about 1,100 acres.¹

Meta’s Hyperion campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana, was announced on December 4, 2024, as a $10 billion, four-million-square-foot data center on the state-owned, 2,250-acre Franklin Farms site about 30 miles northeast of Monroe.⁵ In July 2026 Meta announced another $40 billion, bringing the total to about $50 billion including power infrastructure, with the campus planned to cover more than 3,200 acres and reach 5 GW across two phases.³ Meta has said it expects about 2 GW by 2030, with no public timeline for the full 5 GW.³

At gigawatt scale, power is not something a site has; it is something the utility and developer build. Hyperion shows the pattern. On August 20, 2025, the Louisiana Public Service Commission approved, through a settlement with one commissioner dissenting, Entergy Louisiana’s plan for three combined-cycle gas plants totaling about 2.26 GW: two in Richland Parish and one at the existing Waterford site in St. Charles Parish, with two units expected in 2028 and the third in late 2029.⁶ The package also included a roughly 100-mile, 500 kV line expected by December 2026.⁶

The delivery network was just as large. Entergy described two company-owned and six customer-owned substations, eight new 230 kV lines, and a substation in Richland Parish funded entirely by Meta.² In March 2026 Entergy announced seven more gas plants, about 5.2 GW, which would bring the total serving the campus to ten plants and more than 7 GW.¹² On April 15, 2026, the Public Service Commission voted 4–1 to fast-track that application, which Entergy said Meta would pay for; the vote set the review schedule rather than approving construction, with a final decision expected late in 2026.¹³

Abilene shows a second approach: alongside its utility service, developers filed to site an on-site gas plant of up to 360.5 MW, at an expected cost of up to $500 million.¹⁴ Competition for grid capacity is intense. By August 2026, large-load requests on the Texas grid had reportedly reached about 474 GW, and the state paused new data center grid approvals pending an audit.¹⁵ Most of that queue is speculative, but it shows how crowded the line for power has become. Texas rules for large loads are covered in our guide to Texas Senate Bill 6, and the trade-offs of building generation on site are covered in on-site generation and bridge power.

There is no fixed acres-per-gigawatt rule, because building height, rack density, cooling plant, substations and on-site generation all change the footprint. The reported figures still give a useful range. Dividing the reported acreage by the planned power gives roughly 900 acres per gigawatt at Abilene,¹ about 1,100 acres per gigawatt for Hyperion’s first 2 GW on 2,250 acres,⁵ and about 640 acres per gigawatt for the full 5 GW plan on 3,200 acres.³ The planned Hyperion expansion packs more power onto each acre as the campus densifies.

What matters more than the ratio is shape and control. A gigawatt campus needs one contiguous, reasonably regular tract that can hold long buildings, several high-voltage substations at the edge nearest the transmission corridor, cooling yards, possible generation, internal roads and buffers from neighbors. Start from buildable acreage, not deeded acreage; our guide to gross vs. buildable acreage explains the deductions. Room for later phases is part of the requirement: Hyperion’s footprint grew by roughly 1,000 acres within two years of its announcement.⁵³

Phasing should be designed in from the start. Our guides to campus master planning and load ramp schedules cover how buildings, substations and power blocks are sequenced.

Water demand at gigawatt scale depends far more on the cooling design than on the megawatts. Epoch AI reports that at least six Stargate sites, Abilene among them, use closed-loop liquid cooling that does not evaporate water.¹¹ A closed loop needs an initial charge and then only top-ups for minor losses.

Even then, the reported numbers differ. Associated Press coverage put the initial fill at about one million gallons of municipal water, with Oracle expecting each of the eight buildings to need about 12,000 more gallons per year.⁷ The Texas Tribune reported an initial fill of 8 million gallons, which a city water official called minimal against Abilene’s average use of about 22 million gallons a day, while noting he could not say how much refill water would follow.⁸ The same AP report noted the city’s reservoirs were at roughly half capacity at the time.⁷ A gigawatt of evaporative cooling would be a very different water story.

Wastewater and supply infrastructure also scale. Meta committed more than $200 million to local roads and water systems at the 2024 announcement, and then about $1 billion for roads, water and wastewater with the 2026 expansion.⁵³ See closed-loop and waterless cooling and water stress and drought risk for how to test a site’s supply.

A gigawatt campus is a multiyear megaproject for its region. At the 2024 announcement, Hyperion was expected to employ about 5,000 construction workers at peak and more than 500 permanent staff.⁵ By the July 2026 expansion, the peak construction estimate had risen to about 7,500 and permanent jobs to about 1,000.³ Thousands of daily workers and deliveries mean road upgrades, traffic management and often temporary housing pressure in rural areas. Heavy equipment such as large power transformers needs a planned route; see heavy-haul access.

Public review also scales. Hyperion’s first power package went through a contested Public Service Commission proceeding before approval, and the larger second package went back to regulators.⁶¹³ Tax incentives draw scrutiny too: the original Louisiana deal relied on a state program offering data center tax breaks for 20 years with a possible 10-year extension.⁵ Developers should expect ratepayer cost allocation, water use and local road impacts to be argued in public, and should plan community engagement early.

Few parcels can be judged gigawatt-ready from a desktop review, but many can be ruled out quickly. A practical first pass tests whether the site could plausibly carry the infrastructure that Abilene and Hyperion needed.

• Transmission: 345 kV or 500 kV lines nearby, and a utility or RTO willing to study a load of this size. See transmission voltage for data centers.
• Generation path: a credible plan for new supply, whether utility-built plants, on-site gas with firm pipeline capacity, or both.
• Land: roughly 650 to 1,100 contiguous buildable acres per gigawatt planned, with control of adjoining land for growth and buffers.
• Water: a cooling design matched to local supply, with the initial fill and any ongoing use confirmed in writing by the water provider.
• Access and labor: routes for heavy loads and thousands of daily workers, and a workforce market that can supply them.
• Public process: the regulatory approvals the power plan will need, and how the host community is likely to respond.

Treat every result as a question for the utility, the RTO, the water provider and the county, not as a final answer. If you want an outside view of whether a tract could grow into this class of campus, you can get a site reviewed.