Major U.S. Data Center Markets: Inventory, Absorption and Power

Brokerage research firms track data center markets in megawatts of critical power, not square feet. When CBRE reports vacancy, it means the percentage of power capacity available for lease.² That definition matters for anyone reading market reports as a land or development signal: a 1% vacancy rate says almost nothing about how many buildings are empty and a great deal about how hard it is to find energized capacity.

Most reports focus on colocation and wholesale capacity in a defined set of metros. CBRE groups its largest metros as eight primary North American markets and reports inventory, available capacity, absorption, construction and preleasing for each.² JLL publishes a parallel North America report, covering demand from hyperscale cloud and AI tenants among others, and reported about 1% vacancy and more than 66 GW under construction in its midyear 2026 edition.⁵

Three measures carry most of the signal. Inventory is the operating capacity in the market. Net absorption is the capacity newly leased and occupied over a period. Preleasing is the share of capacity under construction that tenants have already committed to. In the first half of 2026, CBRE reported primary-market net absorption of 1,456 MW and said more than 80% of capacity under construction was preleased, leaving less than 1,500 MW available, roughly six months of supply at the current pace.² Our guide to vacancy, absorption and pricing covers rents and pricing trends in more detail.

CBRE’s second-quarter 2026 market table shows how concentrated the business still is. Northern Virginia’s inventory is larger than Atlanta and Dallas–Fort Worth combined, and available capacity in every major market is a small fraction of what is operating.¹

Vacancy is extremely low across the board. CBRE put Northern Virginia’s vacancy at 0.2% in the first half of 2026, down from 0.7% a year earlier, with only about 10.8 MW available.² At the state level the picture shifts toward Texas: JLL counts about 26 GW of existing and under-construction capacity in Texas against about 13 GW in Virginia, because much of Texas’s pipeline sits outside the traditional metros.⁵

Northern Virginia, centered on Loudoun and Prince William counties, is the default reference point for the industry. It holds roughly 4,497 MW of inventory in CBRE’s count, more than any other North American market.¹ Its advantages are dense fiber, a deep labor pool and decades of established zoning, but its binding constraint is transmission.

Dominion Energy began telling data center companies in July 2022 that power for some new facilities in eastern Loudoun County would be delayed for years because its transmission system had not kept pace with growth, and coverage at the time said constraints in parts of the market were likely to last until new 500 kV transmission was completed around 2026.⁶ Demand has kept rising: on its July 31, 2026 earnings call, Dominion reported more than 53 GW of data center capacity in various stages of contracting, about 12 GW of it under electric service agreements.⁷ Confirm the status of specific transmission projects with Dominion.

For land, that means growth keeps moving outward along transmission corridors into neighboring counties. The market sits in PJM, so capacity prices and regional transmission planning also shape costs. Our Northern Virginia market guide covers county rules, submarkets and land values in depth.

Atlanta

Atlanta now trails only Northern Virginia among the markets in the table above, and in the first half of 2026 it passed Northern Virginia in capacity under construction, with tax incentives, labor availability and rural land cited as drivers, and its pipeline reached nearly 2,900 MW.¹ CBRE’s March 2026 release had put Atlanta’s under-construction total at 2,076 MW at year-end 2025, backed by more than 3 GW of long-term power commitments and Georgia Public Service Commission approvals that support more than 10 GW of future data center growth statewide.⁸

Georgia Power’s pipeline is far larger than what will be built. Georgia PSC staff put prospective large-load projects, about 80% of them data centers, at roughly 69,000 MW in December 2025, up from 16,000 MW in 2023, and the commission chairman acknowledged that some may not materialize.⁹ See our Georgia site selection guide for county-level detail.

Dallas–Fort Worth

Dallas–Fort Worth had about 1,433 MW of inventory and 39.6 MW available in mid-2026.¹ It sits inside ERCOT, which runs its own large-load interconnection process and faces a fast-growing queue. Oncor, the main wires utility for the metro, reported more than 200 GW of interconnection requests, with 186 GW from data centers, and its chief executive said about 20% of requests had signed contracts or were considered high-confidence load.¹⁰ That gap between requests and committed load is why a parcel near a DFW substation is not automatically a powered site.

Phoenix

Phoenix had about 1,069 MW of inventory and only 12.1 MW available in mid-2026, the tightest of the five markets listed here in absolute terms.¹ CBRE’s research reports that SRP and APS power-delivery restrictions are limiting the availability of powered land, and that SRP was processing its first cluster study of 25 applicants with mixed initial results.¹¹ An APS official said in late 2025 that data centers used about 350 MW of APS power against a record system peak of 8,200 MW, and that serving every requested data center would push demand to 19,000 MW. His message to applicants was “We can serve you, but just not now.”⁴

Water and heat add political risk. In August 2026 Arizona’s attorney general asked the legislature and governor to enact a statewide pause on new data center approvals and construction, citing an analysis that data center water demand in greater Phoenix could rise more than 450% if all planned projects are built.¹² That is a request for legislation, not enacted law, but it is a factor to track. See our Arizona guide.

Chicago

Chicago had about 911 MW of inventory and 20 MW available.¹ Its power story is ComEd’s queue. ComEd says its all-time system peak is just under 24,000 MW, and that delivering power for its full data center pipeline would require more than doubling that peak.³ In a September 2025 PJM presentation, Exelon reported 20 GW of highly probable large-load requests across its utilities, 16 GW of them in ComEd’s zone.¹³ In March 2026 the Illinois Commerce Commission approved ComEd’s proposal to require security deposits from large-load customers, sized to their energy needs.¹⁴ See our Illinois guide.

Market reports describe metros. Sites succeed or fail on a specific substation, line and utility study. A parcel in a top market can be unbuildable for years if the local transmission is full, while a parcel two counties out can be attractive if it sits near available capacity. Low vacancy tells you tenants want the market; it does not tell you whether your parcel can be served.

1. 01Identify the serving utility and whether the parcel is inside its service territory.
2. 02Ask about substation and transmission capacity near the parcel, and about current large-load study or cluster timelines.
3. 03Check the utility’s large-load tariff for deposits, minimum bills and collateral, which are now common in major markets.¹⁴
4. 04Confirm zoning and local rules, which in mature markets increasingly restrict where data centers can go.
5. 05Compare the site against the market’s competing powered land supply, not just the market’s headline vacancy.

Our guides to large-load tariffs and emerging data center markets explain how these factors push development beyond the traditional metros. If you want an independent screen of a parcel in or near one of these markets, you can get a site reviewed.