Power Density (W per square foot)

Power density is the amount of electrical power a data center supplies per unit of floor area. It is usually quoted in watts per square foot or kilowatts per square metre of white space. Unlike rack density, which measures one cabinet, it describes the whole hall and drives the sizing of cooling and electrical gear. Traditional enterprise rooms were designed for roughly 100 to 150 W per square foot, while air-cooled colocation halls now commonly offer 150 to 250 W per square foot. AI halls built around liquid cooling can exceed 500 W per square foot, because GPU racks draw 40 to 130 kW each. Buyers should check whether a quoted figure is design capacity or what the hall can deliver across every rack at once, since stranded floor space is common when density is advertised only at the peak.