Clock / UK data centres · updated 26 October 2026
In 2024, data centres in the North used 166 GWh (0.17 TWh) of electricity from the grid. That was 0.3% 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 North. Source: DESNZ src.
| Year | Data centres | GWh | Share of area electricity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 42 | 206 | 0.3% |
| 2021 | 43 | 194 | 0.3% |
| 2022 | 44 | 190 | 0.3% |
| 2023 | 44 | 181 | 0.3% |
| 2024 | 45 | 166 | 0.3% |
Use went from 206 GWh in 2020 to 166 GWh in 2024, down 20%, while the share of local electricity moved from 0.3% to 0.3%. DESNZ counted 42 operational data centres here in 2020 and 45 in 2024 src. Across Great Britain, data centre use rose 41% over the same period.
The North used 3.7% of all data centre electricity in Great Britain in 2024 (166 of 4,460 GWh). Among the 8 areas DESNZ splits Great Britain into, it ranks 6th for total data centre electricity and 6th 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.
166 GWh is about the yearly electricity of 66,400 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 North used about 57,546 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.
DESNZ splits this area further src:
OpenStreetMap and Wikidata have 34 data centre sites mapped inside the North's boundary src src, 28 of them with a name: Asanti Manchester, CDL Strata Campus Data Centre, DXC Wynyard Data Center, Datum Datacentres (MCR2), Equinix MA1, Equinix MA4, Evolution @ Agecroft Commerce Park, GridJet, HSBC Data Centre, HSBC Wakefield Data Centre, Hartree Centre, Hive IT, Iron Mountain, Joule House, Lloyds Banking Group Copley, Lumen Technologies, Lunar 1&2, Pulsant, Redcentric Elland Data Centre, Stellium Newcastle Campus, Thales, The Babbage Centre, UoS IT Services, Verizon Warrington, VocaLink, nLighten Chester, nLighten Edge Data Centre Liverpool, nLighten Leeds.
Sites with a recorded opening year: unnamed site (2024).
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.