The power grid

What is a gigawatt?

A gigawatt is a billion watts. It is the unit the biggest data center campuses are now planned in, and about what it takes to run hundreds of thousands of homes.

From a watt to a gigawatt

  1. Watt1A small LED night light uses about this
  2. Kilowatt1,000 wattsA microwave oven running on high
  3. Megawatt1,000,000 wattsA thousand kilowatts
  4. Gigawatt1,000,000,000 wattsA thousand megawatts, a billion watts

One gigawatt, around the clock, is about what this many homes use

840,000

homes, each using an average of kilowatts over a year calculated

= 10,000 homes

Data centers are now planned in gigawatts

  1. 1 gigawatt
    1 GW
  2. The largest operating data center on Cleanview's list: Colossus 2 Macrohard (xAI), Shelby County, Tennessee reported
    1.1 GW
  3. Every Minnesota data center on the list with a capacity (24 of them), added up reported
    1.9 GW
  4. The largest planned: Delta Gigasite - Expansion, Millard County, Utah reported
    9.7 GW
  5. Minnesota's grid zone (MISO Zone 1) at its busiest hour on record, July 2026 measured
    17.5 GW