Goldman Sachs makes a striking revision in “Exchanges,” predicting that global data center power could rise 170% by 2030 from 2025 levels. Leveraging a data set from 451 Research, researchers Brian Singer and Carly Davenport project a data center power demand of about 108 GWs by 2030 for U.S. data centers  (up from previous estimates of 83 GWs), with a projected global total of 217 GWs by 2030 (up from their previous estimate of 168 GWs).

Pointing to increased utilization and occupancy of existing data centers, they note vacancy rates in the U.S. are coming down across all of the major data center markets – currently at about 1% to 2%, as opposed to the 2% to 7% of the past few years. In their view, vacancy rates will reach about 3% in 2030.

In looking to the future, the researchers say that merchant nuclear capacity and high-voltage transmission will keep the PJM region as a dominant data center market through 2030, but surprisingly, they say it’s possible the MISO market will overtake ERCOT and become the second-largest data center market (at 16%) in the U.S. by 2030. That, they attribute, to the fact regulated utilities in MISO region are building power generation capacity for data centers as opposed to leaving it to developers to do so.

That said, they expect strong growth in Texas with ERCOT, which will be the third-largest by 2030 (at about 14%), even with the Governor’s recent decisions around auditing data center projects.

They do expect that the Mid-Atlantic region will remain the largest U.S. data center power market until at least 2030, since Northern Virginia is a massive market, but, the 7-year wait times on connecting to the grid might help the Midwest – with ample land and expanding access to utility power – close the gap significantly by 2030.