Clock / UK data centres / Outer London · updated 26 October 2026
In 2024, data centres in Hillingdon, the west London borough that includes Hayes and Stockley Park, used 536 GWh (0.54 TWh) of electricity from the grid. That was 28.1% of all grid electricity consumed in the area src.
Gigawatt-hours of grid electricity used by data centres each year, and that use as a share of all grid electricity in Hillingdon. Source: DESNZ src.
| Year | Data centres | GWh | Share of area electricity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 7 | 106 | 7.4% |
| 2021 | 7 | 173 | 11.6% |
| 2022 | 6 | 256 | 16.2% |
| 2023 | 10 | 391 | 22.6% |
| 2024 | 10 | 536 | 28.1% |
Use went from 106 GWh in 2020 to 536 GWh in 2024, up 407%, while the share of local electricity moved from 7.4% to 28.1%. DESNZ counted 7 operational data centres here in 2020 and 10 in 2024 src. Across Great Britain, data centre use rose 41% over the same period.
Hillingdon used 12.0% of all data centre electricity in Great Britain in 2024 (536 of 4,460 GWh). Among the 5 local areas DESNZ names individually, it ranks 2nd for total data centre electricity and 2nd for the share of local electricity going to data centres src. For comparison, data centres used 1.8% of grid electricity across Great Britain as a whole.
536 GWh is about the yearly electricity of 215,000 typical UK homes, at Ofgem's 2,500 kWh a year for a medium home src. DESNZ's two figures also imply that all grid users in Hillingdon used about 1,907 GWh in 2024 (data centre use ÷ its share).
Derived: homes = data centre kWh ÷ 2,500 kWh, rounded to 3 significant figures. Implied area total = data centre GWh ÷ share. Share of GB = area GWh ÷ GB data centre GWh.
Hillingdon accounts for 46% of data centre electricity in Outer London (1,169 GWh) src.
OpenStreetMap and Wikidata have 12 data centre sites mapped inside Hillingdon's boundary src src, 11 of them with a name: BA Boadicea House Data Centre, British Telecom Computer Centre, Colt London 4, CyrusOne LON2, Digital Realty LHR17, Rackspace London 8, UBS Data Centre, Virtus London 14, Virtus London5, Virtus London6, Virtus London7.
Sites placed by point-in-polygon against ONS local authority boundaries src. Community-mapped sites aren't the same list as DESNZ's count (which only includes colocation and hyperscale data centres with matched meters), so the two numbers differ. OpenStreetMap snapshot: 21 September 2026. Missing one? Add it to OpenStreetMap. See them on the map.
There's no AI Growth Zone in Hillingdon. The nearest is Culham, Oxfordshire, roughly 55 km away in a straight line src. All UK AI Growth Zones →
Distance measured from the middle of the area's bounding box to the Growth Zone's town-level map pin, rounded to the nearest 5 km.
DESNZ's figures cover colocation, managed hosting and hyperscale data centres whose electricity meters could be matched; they exclude enterprise (in-house) data centres and on-site generation, so they're a floor, not a total. Some areas are grouped by DESNZ for disclosure reasons. Download this page's data: local.json.