How much electricity do US data centers use? Count the homes.
Every search, stream and chatbot answer runs on a computer in a data center somewhere, and those computers run on electricity. A lot of it.
In 2023, US data centers used 176 TWh of electricity. A terawatt-hour is a billion kilowatt-hours, which is not a number anyone can picture. So let's turn it into homes.
In homes
An average American home buys 10,791 kWh of electricity in a year. Divide one by the other:
That's enough electricity to run about 16 million average US homes for a whole year.
In Hoover Dams
The Hoover Dam is one of the most famous power plants in the country. In an average year it generates 4.2 billion kWh. To cover US data centers, you would need:
That's about 42 Hoover Dams, every one of them running for the full year.
Why it's going up
Training and running AI models takes far more computing than the web pages and videos that filled data centers a decade ago. The same report that supplied the 2023 figure expects data-center use to keep climbing through the rest of the decade. When newer numbers come out, this page will be updated, and every comparison on it will update with them.
Sources
- average US home, energy: 10,791 kWh. US Energy Information Administration: How much electricity does an American home use?, retrieved November 11, 2026. Electricity purchased in one year (2022 figure). Homes with solar panels may use more than they buy.
- Hoover Dam, energy: 4.2 billion kWh. Bureau of Reclamation: Hoover Dam power FAQ, retrieved November 11, 2026. Average yearly net generation, 1947 to 2008; varies with the water level in Lake Mead.
- US data centers in 2023, energy: 176 TWh. US Department of Energy: report on data center energy use (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024), retrieved November 11, 2026. Total for calendar year 2023, about 4.4% of US electricity.
How we calculate: methodology.