Data centres in the Midlands: electricity use and sites

In 2024, data centres in the Midlands used 87 GWh (0.09 TWh) of electricity from the grid. That was 0.2% of all grid electricity consumed in the area src.

The trend, 2020 to 2024

Gigawatt-hours of grid electricity used by data centres each year, and that use as a share of all grid electricity in the Midlands. Source: DESNZ src.

Use went from 114 GWh in 2020 to 87 GWh in 2024, down 24%, while the share of local electricity moved from 0.3% to 0.2%. DESNZ counted 15 operational data centres here in 2020 and 16 in 2024 src. Across Great Britain, data centre use rose 41% over the same period.

How the Midlands ranks

The Midlands used 2.0% of all data centre electricity in Great Britain in 2024 (87 of 4,460 GWh). Among the 8 areas DESNZ splits Great Britain into, it ranks 7th for total data centre electricity and 8th 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.

1. South East: 1,785 GWh, 5.1% of local electricity
2. Outer London: 1,169 GWh, 7.1% of local electricity
3. Inner London: 489 GWh, 2.7% of local electricity
4. South West and Wales: 372 GWh, 1.1% of local electricity
5. East of England: 339 GWh, 1.4% of local electricity
6. The North: 166 GWh, 0.3% of local electricity
7. The Midlands: 87 GWh, 0.2% of local electricity
8. Scotland: 51 GWh, 0.2% of local electricity

What that much electricity means

87 GWh is about the yearly electricity of 34,900 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 Midlands used about 40,131 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.

Mapped data centre sites

OpenStreetMap and Wikidata have 14 data centre sites mapped inside the Midlands's boundary src src, 11 of them with a name: Digital Space DC - Newark, EE Data Centre, Evoque Data Center Solutions, Experian, Hellermann Tyton Data, Hutchison 3G, Internet Central, Ionos, Santander, The Horizon Centre, nLighten Nottingham.

Sites with a recorded opening year: Ionos (2022).

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.

Nearby and related areas

• Data centres in the North: 166 GWh
• Data centres in the East of England: 339 GWh
• Data centres in the South West and Wales: 372 GWh
• Data centres in the South East: 1,785 GWh
• Data centres in Slough: 1,293 GWh
• Data centres in Hillingdon: 536 GWh

All UK areas, sortable →