How the numbers are made

Estimate

Facility. IT load is the input. PUE comes from rack density (air 1.45, 80 kW liquid 1.18, 130 kW liquid 1.12) adjusted +0.15 in hot climates and −0.07 in cold ones. Facility power is IT load times PUE. GPUs per rack use 70% of rack power at the GPU's TDP.

Build. Permitting takes 3 months plus (75 − sentiment)/8, clamped to 2–14, with 2 extra months when a mostly automated crew meets a high-wage labor market. Civil, shell, fit-out and rack phases scale with facility size and are divided by crew speed, which grows with the square root of effective crew and 50% faster with full automation. Power supply runs in parallel from the end of permitting; the longer of the two chains plus 1.5 months of commissioning is the time to live. Capex per facility MW: land $0.25M × land index, civil $1.2M, shell $3.5M, mechanical and electrical $5.5M, commissioning $0.2M, plus the supply capex below, plus racks and GPUs at list.

Operations. Utilization is the blended supply firmness × 0.72, the second factor being the commercial fill rate of a merchant GPU hall. Revenue is GPU count × hours × utilization × GPU-hour rate. Power cost is energy drawn (50% base load plus 50% scaling with utilization) × blended price. Staff is 12 plus one per 12 racks, reduced 65% by automation, at 1.4× the local wage. Maintenance is 1.2% of IT capex. NPV discounts a ten-year flow at 10% with capex split 60/40 over two years, 7% annual price decay per GPU generation, and a year-five refresh costing 70% of GPU capex that resets revenue to 85% of year one.

Environment. CO₂ is energy × blended carbon intensity. Water combines cooling (1.9 L per IT kWh evaporative, 0.6 L liquid) and generation water per source. Grid draw share is the grid portion of facility MW over regional headroom. The environment score weights carbon 45%, water 25%, grid 20%, land 10%.

Community. Local spend is permanent payroll × 1.6 plus 12% of opex; tax is 3% of revenue plus 0.4% of capex per year. Prosperity scales those against the size of the local construction economy. Sentiment shifts with the people share of the crew, the supply mix, water stress and grid draw. Noise and traffic indices grow with the logarithm of facility size and headcount and are weighted by nearby population; nuisance is 50% noise, 30% traffic, 20% land take. Build phases: campuses above 150 MW are modeled as overlapping 150 MW phases staggered four months apart. The community score weights prosperity 45%, sentiment 25%, inverse nuisance 30%.

Composite. 40% economic, 35% environment, 25% community.