Meta's planned 5-gigawatt Hyperion campus in Louisiana would use 43.8 terawatt-hours a year running flat out, more than every major city we compared except New York. The City Line-Up ranks eight gigawatt-scale AI campuses against the cities they now rival.
Annual electricity use of 13 U.S. cities (gray rungs, TWh, log scale) and what eight gigawatt-scale AI data center campuses would use running at full power all year (dashed blue rungs), with the rank each campus would take among the cities.
Campus values are derived: planned capacity × 8,760 hours. Real campuses run below full power (LBNL estimates about 50% average use of interconnection capacity), so treat them as ceilings. City figures differ in definition and year: New York City is NYISO Zone J grid load (2025); Philadelphia and Phoenix are citywide use from city inventories (2022); the rest are 2025 retail sales of the utility serving each city, whose territory can extend past city limits.
Largest AI data centers by planned power capacity, gigawatts, as stated by the developer or its utility.
Stargate Wisconsin is the Vantage / OpenAI / Oracle site at Port Washington. Developers measure capacity differently: Meta says "compute capacity", Crusoe "total power capacity", Vantage Frontier "GPU compute capacity". Susquehanna is the power Talen will deliver to Amazon under contract, and Port Washington is WEC Energy's demand forecast through 2030 (Vantage itself says "close to a gigawatt" of AI capacity). Most campuses are still being built.
Data center electricity use vs. state electricity use: Hyperion at full power vs. 2025 retail sales of the states nearest in size, TWh
Hyperion is 5 GW × 8,760 hours (derived). Below Idaho, the states it would also exceed are Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Alaska and Vermont (5.5 TWh), plus the District of Columbia. State values are all-sector retail sales.
Hyperion's annual electricity use at full power and at 50% average use vs. Los Angeles and Phoenix, TWh
LBNL estimates that U.S. data centers use about 50% of their grid interconnection capacity on average, "due to high redundancy requirements and maintenance needs." Both Hyperion values are derived; Meta does not publish expected annual use. Los Angeles is 2025 retail sales; Phoenix is 2022 citywide use.
Susquehanna nuclear plant (Pa.) generating capacity, megawatts: power contracted to Amazon's data center campus vs. the rest
Talen will supply 1,920 MW to Amazon through 2042, ramping to full volume no later than 2032. Plant capacity (2,494 MW) is from Talen's 2025 10-K; Talen owns 90% of the plant. "Rest of the plant" and the 77% share are derived. Running all year, 1,920 MW is 16.8 TWh, more than Philadelphia's 13.1 TWh in 2022.
U.S. data center electricity use, TWh: 2024 estimate and LBNL Reference Case forecasts
2024 is LBNL's last historical year; 2028 and 2030 are Reference Case forecasts (2030 range: 521–843 TWh). LBNL publishes no values in between, so the lines are straight segments. Excludes cryptocurrency mining. Texas is EIA 2025 retail sales, the largest of any state.