Question 1

How much economic value does a data center create for its community?

Accepted Answer

At the Northern Virginia baseline, each kilowatt of AI compute returns about $622 per year in community economic value once energized. For a 52.3 MW facility that is about $32.5 million a year and $693.8 million over a 15-year life. The exact figure depends on local property and income tax rates, which you can enter in the calculator.

Question 2

How do I calculate a data center's economic impact on my county?

Accepted Answer

Enter the project size in megawatts and your county's property tax rate, state income tax rate, and prevailing wages. The calculator applies the audited SAVRN Community Economic Impact Model and returns the value per kilowatt, annual and 15-year community value, public revenue, permanent and construction jobs, and the daily cost of an interconnection delay.

Question 3

What is the community economic value per kilowatt of a data center?

Accepted Answer

About $622 per kilowatt per year at the Northern Virginia Base case. Most of that value is public revenue anchored to statutory tax rates, so it barely moves between the conservative and aggressive multiplier scenarios, which is what makes the figure defensible in a public hearing.

Question 4

How many jobs does a data center create?

Accepted Answer

A 52.3 MW facility supports about 72 permanent operations jobs, at two to three times the local average wage, plus roughly 3,236 construction job-years during the build. Both scale linearly per megawatt.

Question 5

What does a data center delay cost a community?

Accepted Answer

For a 52.3 MW facility, the combined developer and community loss is about $587,680 per day it sits unenergized. A six-month interconnection delay drops the modeled project return from 17.1 percent to 8.8 percent, the point at which a project relocates instead of waiting.

What a SAVRN AI factory returns to your community, per kilowatt.

Your inputs

What the $622/kW is made of, per year

The mirror: what a delay costs