Clock / UK data centres · updated 26 October 2026
In 2024, data centres in the South West and Wales used 372 GWh (0.37 TWh) of electricity from the grid. That was 1.1% 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 the South West and Wales. Source: DESNZ src.
| Year | Data centres | GWh | Share of area electricity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 15 | 180 | 0.5% |
| 2021 | 15 | 247 | 0.7% |
| 2022 | 15 | 293 | 0.9% |
| 2023 | 15 | 352 | 1.0% |
| 2024 | 15 | 372 | 1.1% |
Use went from 180 GWh in 2020 to 372 GWh in 2024, up 107%, while the share of local electricity moved from 0.5% to 1.1%. DESNZ counted 15 operational data centres here in 2020 and 15 in 2024 src. Across Great Britain, data centre use rose 41% over the same period.
The South West and Wales used 8.3% of all data centre electricity in Great Britain in 2024 (372 of 4,460 GWh). Among the 8 areas DESNZ splits Great Britain into, it ranks 4th for total data centre electricity and 5th 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.
372 GWh is about the yearly electricity of 149,000 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 the South West and Wales used about 34,059 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.
OpenStreetMap and Wikidata have 20 data centre sites mapped inside the South West and Wales's boundary src src, 16 of them with a name: AWS Swindon Data Centre, Ark Data Centres, CGI Datacenter, Centerprise International (Distribution), Centerprise International Newport, DXC Technology, Data Vault - Bournemouth BCP01, Insight Data Ltd, Microsoft Newport data centre, Nationwide Swindon Technology Centre, Tata Communications Highbridge Datacentre, Vantage Data Centers, Vantage Data Centers - CWL13, Vodafone, nLighten Bristol, nLighten Swindon.
Sites with a recorded opening year: DXC Technology (1997).
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.
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.