Site Feasibility Calculator

ML Harris

Data Centre Advisory

Turn Land Into Live Capacity.

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Planning consent and environmental clearance assumed. Calculates buildable IT capacity from land area and grid connection.

01 — Site Geometry

Total Site Area (acres) iTotal land parcel. Planning consent and environmental clearance are assumed for this calculation.

Approved Land Coverage (%) iPlanning-consented percentage of the site that can carry built structures. Typical data centre range: 25–45% including M&E plant yards.

Max Permitted Building Height iPlanning-consented maximum structural height. Single-storey data centre shells run 10–15m. Two storeys requires ≥20m consent and doubles gross floor area.

Data Hall Efficiency (%) iPercentage of gross floor area that becomes usable server floor. Plant rooms, corridors, loading bays, and offices account for the rest. Industry norm: 55–65%.

02 — Grid Connection

Grid Connection (MVA) iApparent power from the grid operator. A 10% power factor deduction is applied. 100 MVA yields approximately 90 MW of usable real power.

Independent Grid Feeds iTier III and IV require two independent feeds from separate substations. A single feed places full backup dependency on on-site generation.

On-Site Generation Capacity (MW) iTotal MW of diesel gensets, gas engines, BESS, or solar on-site. Checked against the N+1 backup requirement for the selected Uptime Tier.

03 — Build Specification

Target PUE iPower Usage Effectiveness = total facility draw ÷ IT load. Google fleet: 1.09. Modern design target: 1.30. Industry average: 1.56.

Cooling Method iAir cooling suits ≤20kW/rack. Hybrid combines free-cooling and mechanical. Liquid cooling is required for AI and HPC workloads above 20kW/rack.

Uptime Tier iTier II = N, no redundancy. Tier III = N+1, concurrent maintainability. Tier IV = 2N, fully fault-tolerant.

Target Rack Density (kW / rack) iStandard enterprise IT: 8kW. AI inference: 30–60kW. Training clusters: 100kW+. Above 20kW triggers liquid cooling requirement.

A — Overall Viability

B — Power Chain

C — Space and Racks

D — On-Site Generation

E — Land Use Breakdown

Building footprint (consented)

M&E plant yard (estimated)

Cooling plant area (estimated)

Access roads and parking

Open land, buffers, green space

Industry benchmark: 30–40% of a campus is actively developed. The remainder is required for buffers, roads, and support infrastructure.

F — Not Modelled

—Grid connection cost and lead time (18–24 months for large power transformers)

—Fiber carrier diversity and proximity to nearest IXP

—Water availability for evaporative cooling (up to 5M gal/day at scale)

—Planning fees, S106 obligations, and infrastructure contributions

—Construction cost per MW (typically £8–14M/MW fully fitted)

—EU Energy Efficiency Directive and carbon reporting obligations