Northern Virginia Filling New Data Center Capacity Faster Than Anywhere Else in US
March 17, 2023 | Keith Loria | Commercial Observer
Northern Virginia, the world’s largest data center market, notched a record for data center absorption in 2022, according to the latest North American Data Center Trends report by CBRE.
Northern Virginia recorded 436.9 megawatts of absorption in 2022, beating its previous record of 311 megawatts, which was set in 2021. It also had the highest absorption rate of any market in the country. (Data center absorption is measured in megawatts, not square feet, because capacity is dependent on technology in addition to space.)
“The unrivaled connectivity and infrastructure that exists in Northern Virginia continues to drive demand,” Jamie Jelinek, a senior vice president at CBRE, told Commercial Observer. “Major cloud providers continue to fuel the majority of this growth.”
What’s more, NoVA’s vacancy rate dropped to under 1 percent, despite significant power constraints and land restrictions.