Time to energize measures the whole path: application, interconnection study, upgrade design, construction, commissioning, and power delivered.
- About 18 months in favourable markets
- Five years or more in congested ones
CBRE describes greenfield sites able to receive power within 18 to 36 months as highly sought after. Where new infrastructure is required, interconnection runs 24 to 48 months or more.
Why it dominates
JLL ranks speed to power as the primary site selection criterion — ahead of land price.
The reason is arithmetic. On a large project, delay carries financing cost on committed capital, deferred revenue, and contractual exposure to a customer expecting capacity on a date. DataCenterScope's illustrative model prices this at roughly $1.5 million per month.
Two years of delay is therefore a $36 million line item. On 100 acres that is $360,000 per acre of pure timing cost, before a dollar of infrastructure. It is why a developer will pay what looks like an absurd premium for a faster site — they are buying back time at less than time costs them.
What determines it
Faster: utility reserve margin, existing adequate-voltage transmission, a utility with large-load experience, streamlined permitting.
Slower: congested queues, transmission constraints, inexperienced utilities, contested entitlement, moratoriums.
This is the mechanism behind the whole geographic shift. Northern Virginia did not get worse. It got slow.